In the video for "Bye America," Delish Da Goddess lays out two responses to the times we live in.

[Updated] “Bye America,” the newest music video from Delish Da Goddess, premiering below, is two songs and concepts rolled into one. Delish directed the video herself, along with Juicebox Burton of Studio LaLaLa. Gigi Glenn of NOVAC handled production. 

The first half of “Bye America” is set on the bayou, with a green color palate and layers upon layers of Spanish moss. Delish ties a boat to a wooden post with her little cousin behind her, perched on a ladder that leans against a live oak. Her niece looks out at the water through a spyglass, then sits on a tree swing next to the other two.

“It's a Hook-inspired video,” Delish says, referring to the 1991 Peter Pan-inspired Robin Williams vehicle. “I love Hook, but if you make Hook with three Black girls, it’s gonna look more like Harriet Tubman [(2019)].”

The second half of the video isn’t spatially rooted. Shot in Lafitte Parish, it shows Delish and her cousin, first dancing around a fire pit at night, then riding Mad Max-style on an ATV through deserted streets that could exist anywhere in the suburban South. This post-apocalyptic vision of a decaying America is central to Delish’s current state of mind. She embarks on a European tour in May, leaving the country for the first time.

“How are they gonna react to me?” she wonders. “There’s a nervousness because they’ve probably never seen anyone like me.”

Still, she’s ready for a break from the States. As a Black, full-bodied, openly gay woman, she’s faced her fair share of bigotry. Her hometown of Violet--for which she named her excellent seventh EP--is just a half hour drive from New Orleans but a world away, but it's a place where she never felt fully at home.

“Everywhere in America is foreign to me,” she says. “How could you love a place that’s never loved you?”

The first track on “Bye America” is a straightforward, hook-centered song about making money, but the second, shorter one, touches on more personal and political themes. Each half of the double track was recorded in Seattle, where Delish was working with her frequent producer, Wolftone. Hours before her flight back to New Orleans, they’d nailed the first half down but wanted something more to show for their time. Wolftone already had a beat laid out and Delish freestyled on it from the heart.

“‘I see a world full of racists and crooks,’” she says, quoting herself. “They’re everywhere you turn.” But Delish doesn’t plan on letting them keep her quiet.

“I’m gonna be like Robin Hood,” she says. “They’re in for a rude awakening."

Updated January 29 at 5:13 pm.

The main image was changed after the post was first published.