V I D E O
The piece features JXANDER as the pirate-at-large César Noir (Black Caesar), or any of the many iterations of César Noir. The eponymous name has been used to describe a lineage of dynamic black pirates that “terrorized” naval vessels as a means of survival, the alternative being to serve a life enslaved or worse, if such a fate even exists. One of these figures was a former African chieftain, stripped from his home and thrust into enslavement only to thwart his captors upon reaching the Florida coast in North America.
JXANDER derives the musical production from Ludwig van Beethoven's “Quasi una fantasia”, which translates to “”Sonata almost a fantasy.” It is eponymously named “Moonlight Sonata,” just like César and millions of other enslaved who were conventionally renamed by their captors. The vocal performance, production, and songwriting capture an imagined inner dialogue of César Noir through an amalgam of hip hop and classical idioms.