After the dreamy, psychedelic “Highest in the Room” that Travis Scott featured Rosalía on last year, it now seems only fair for her to invite him on one of her own tracks, “TKN.” As her second single release from 2020, the reggaeton-infused track is rife for a video that features plenty of choreography. Directed by Nicolás Méndez, the scene opens on a child sitting on a picnic blanket before a herd of people start running past. Soon, Rosalía emerges to take the child in her arms, walking calmly as everyone else runs past a mattress store, an auto parts store and the like (the scene, indeed, feels tailored to the frantic rebellion of the past few days in the United States).
Soon, they’re all inside of a house dancing in defiance as Rosalía cradles another child in her arms, singing, “No new friends, no new wounds.” Meaning, of course, that if you don’t let new people–outsiders that can’t be trusted–into your fold, then you have helped to safeguard yourself and the ones you love. It’s all very mafioso, to be sure, and certainly seems more than applicable in these pandemic times when making new acquaintances or friends is perhaps more trouble than the liability is worth. As the ringleader of the youths of all ages, Rosalía dances both among them and, at times, in the center of their circle. As the “mama” of them all, she warns, “You better not break the Omertá”–thus, at all costs, never turn your back on or betray your “family” for anyone “on the outside”–least of all the police or the government (all while managing to reference film auteurs Pedro Almodóvar and Gaspar Noé in her lyrics).
As Travis Scott appears in the frame to rap his part of the song, the scene is taken back out into the streets, where the rhythm of the beat, at times mimicking that of a series of gunshots, punctuates their hard-nosed resistance to anyone that would try to fuck with their existence. To that end, the symbol embodied by a giant donut on the kitchen table that all of the children start eating from like it’s a carcass seems more than aimed as a none too subtle dig at cops, the most donut-ravaging of them all. From there the imagery becomes more violent and visceral, a white dove falling to the ground as blood spatters around it–signaling the end of peace, as it were.
Back in the house, the dancing continues, rattling a sign against the wall that reads, “There’s no place like home.” For many, that amounts to the people in their lives rather than the actual domicile they reside in (even if corona made it pretty goddamn glaring just how disparate in luxury the homes throughout the world are).
One of the final scenes of the video shows the house filled with the shoes of children, as Rosalía and Travis Scott seem to be underlyingly saying that someone has to be responsible for them, their future. Will it be one punctuated by violence or unrest out of the continued need to be insularly protective? Or will it be one in which they can dance in the streets freely instead of having to do so in the confines of their cramped home?
