Young Paris, the Paris-born, New York-raised Congolese musician, was just re-watching a cut of his latest video, “Best of Me,” when we connected over the phone in recently to, as it happened, discuss the very video, which premieres exclusively on W a week after it was released on Tidal.
“I think the video really captured the ambiance we were going for,” he said. The video, which accompanies the fourth track off his recent EP, Afrobeats, is the second iteration of “Best of Me”; Young Paris, born Milandou Badila, had previously released a version of the track and video featuring Ben Bronfman, but the remix stars the Nigerian musician Tiwa Savage—who has been likened to that nation’s Beyoncé.
“I was really channeling it from a man’s perspective,” he said of the original. Savage’s lines lend a woman’s voice. “In the video, it’s fly, it’s cool, but this woman is this selfish girl that becomes the bad guy in the video but doesn’t have anything to say,” Paris went on. “Tiwa became the voice of that girl.”