Genesis Owusu - Stay Blessed (Official Video)

Picture Credit: Bec Parsons

Genesis Owusu releases his highly anticipated sophomore album, STRUGGLER, this Friday, August 18 via OURNESS / AWAL.

Owusu also shares the album’s third single, “Stay Blessed,” and the Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore-directed video featuring Owusu and his Roaches – fans from across Australia that showed up to the video shoot in Melbourne ready to shave their heads and dawn the album’s iconic red stripe on their heads. The “Stay Blessed” video is more scaled back and raw than the album’s previous videos for “Leaving the Light” and “Tied Up!,” directed by globally-celebrated Aotearoa (New Zealand) visual artist Lisa Reihana, and can be seen here. Of the video, Owusu notes: “7 days before this was shot, i put up an instagram story asking if anyone was available at this specific time, at this specific place, but most importantly, if they were a baldy / were down to shave and colour their head for me. Thank you to the 70 people who flew up, drove down, and skipped work to come mosh with me. Roaches 4L. ‘Stay Blessed’ out now!!”

STRUGGLER is an imminent exploration of the chaos and absurdity of life, and our ability to endure. Where his celebrated 2021 debut album, Smiling With No Teeth, uncovered the battle against depression and racism, STRUGGLER is about how to get through its struggle. The album takes inspiration from a close friend hitting the brink and coming through the other side, in conjunction with prompted questions of life and beauty that Owusu found himself contemplating during readings of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis - references that are explicitly featured in recent single “Tied Up!”.