It’s “Game Over” for everyone else, because Jujulipps has opened her new era in style.
On her first release since winning the Taite Music Prize Best Independent Debut Award, the Auckland rapper and artist channels Tekken and Street Fighter characters in a ferocious anthem.
“Game Over” finds Jujulipps utilising video game elements as an analogy for her dominant energy and assertive spirit, with fellow Auckland rapper WHO SHOT SCOTT lending video game-influenced production.
The single is the first release from a forthcoming EP, said to introduce “a new side of Juju to the world.”
“I’m excited to keep exploring where I could take my craft and I’m really honoured to be a part of hip-hop history, especially in Aotearoa,” she adds. “I can’t wait to show the world this side of Jujulipps.”
The accompanying music video, directed by Night Watch, sees Jujulipps adopting the guide of various difference characters, “one sexy, one cute, and one masculine,” to highlight the “personalities fighting to take centre stage.”
“I had the privilege of working with Night Watch – a Tāmaki Makaurau-based film production company that saw me perform at the legendary Camp A Low Hum in Wellington and reached out,” Jujulipps shares “Jazz and Jaya were amazing to work with and made sure we were always creatively aligned.
“It was literally one of the best experiences I’ve had filming a music video,” she adds.
Jujulipps’ new EP will follows her 2023 debut EP Get That Shot, which earned her the Taite Music Prize Best Independent Debut Award this year.
Get That Shot made it to #7 on Rolling Stone AU/ NZ‘s Best New Zealand Albums of 2023 list, and we praised Jujulipps’ debut project as being the sound of a “future global star.”
“Has there been a more confident, sharp-shooting hip hop artist to come out of New Zealand in the last five years than Jujulipps? As her 2023 EP, Get That Shot, reveals, none of her confidence is undue, because she has the propulsive energy and ferocious flow to back her self-belief up,” we wrote.
Jujulipps’ “Game Over” is out now via Bigpop Records.
