Residente received an award at Cannes Lions thanks to the video clip of “This is not America”

Puerto Rican rapper and songwriter René Pérez Joglar “Resident” won an award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for his music video about colonization and social division “This is Not America,” Sony Music reported Wednesday.

Directed by Frenchman Gregory Ohrel and, creatively, by “Residente”, the music video mixes the symbolism of different cultures, portraying indigenous children sitting on disposable objects of global capitalism.

With this award, the “Grand Prix for Entertainment Lions for Music”, “Residente” becomes one of the first Latin and urban artists to win this recognition at the aforementioned festival, according to a statement from Sony Music.

The music video also places pre-Columbian monuments in the midst of First World landscapes and highlights the similarities between dance steps and a police assault, in order to make the audience think.

Residente is accompanied by the Franco-Cuban Ibeyi twins: Naomi Díaz, who contributes percussion to the song, and Lisa-Kaindé, who sings in the choir.

“This Is Not America,” which was released last March, is related to a three-year-old Resident Project with professors from Yale University and New York University.

The experts studied the singer’s brain waves along with the brain patterns of worms, mice, monkeys and flies, among others, in order to create musical frequencies that would become rhythms.

For this song, Residente used his own brainwaves and those of worms to develop emphatic waves of electronica mixed with his rapping, Ibeyi’s voice, and percussion.

The work, which is produced by Doomsday Entertainment and Sony Music Latin, in collaboration with Residente’s production company, 1868 Studios, also won “Best Director, Best Music Video and Best Video Effects” at the Berlin MVA.