D Smoke Explores Many Black Themes in His “Black Habits” Video

D Smoke’s “Black Habits” video explores a diverse spectrum of life from the black perspective. From African tribal dances to white-owned and black-worked plantations, D Smoke also depicts present-day sights such as cruising in a vehicle and wearing gold jewelry.

The video opens with moss-draped trees on a Southern plantation where a white man on horseback pursues a black woman who is running away from him. In the next scene, D Smoke transitions from the visual of black field hands picking cotton while a white overseer toys with a whip … to himself, sitting on horseback.

The video showcases one of the themes that is chanted throughout — “everything black” — which includes depictions from the past as well as contemporary images in a back-and-forth image play.

A poignant part of D Smoke’s video is the last scene in which he buys the white-columned plantation home where his once-enslaved African ancestors lived and worked. When he signs the closing documents on this new home, D Smoke ends the video with a message — “buy land, not jewels” — a reference to an earlier scene in the video of buying gold jewelry in a jewelry store. It’s a turnaround of history, from black people being owned as property to black people being able to buy their own property.