A first look at Time's new video for "Why My Money Ghost" from his 12 Headed Hydra series | Backbeat | Denver | Denver Westword | The Leading Independent News Source in Denver, Colorado
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A first look at Time's new video for "Why My Money Ghost" from his 12 Headed Hydra series

It's fitting that Chris Steele chose the name "Time" as his moniker, because he clearly wastes none. Last year, he released one EP every month all year for free download the Dirty Laboratory website. And now that the dust has settled on that project, he's followed it up with a...
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It's fitting that Chris Steele chose the name "Time" as his moniker, because he clearly wastes none. Last year, he released one EP every month all year for free download the Dirty Laboratory website. And now that the dust has settled on that project, he's followed it up with a video for "Why My Money Ghost," a track from the 12 Headed Hyrda series.

While it's not the most interesting rap Time spits on 6 Headed Hydra (that award goes to album opener "Blah Blah Fuck You"), the rapper deserves mad props for taking his progressive political viewpoints that he so often writes -- or used to write about, rather, on his Examiner blog -- and laying them down over a sparse backing track for "Why My Money Ghost."

Time's rhymes about money ("They say they got your back then they hand you the bill," "they all think they're principals, not teachers and students") are incisive and the cut is certainly bump-worthy when you're riding through any shopping district in Denver with your windows down and speakers on blast. But it's hard to take those rhymes too serious in a video with seemingly inexplicable images of graffiti on a wooden fence commanding us to "Consume the graffiks" (Consume the "graffiks"?) while Time torches Monopoly money.

Okay, that last one's not so inexplicable. Monopoly money certainly has meaning (real dollar bills are just toys; the U.S. dollar doesn't hold any value -- take your pick), but the rando shots with Time doing bench presses while wearing Jim Morrison's face on a T-shirt stick out like a sore pectoral, and the shot of the Key Bank and E-Trade Financial signs have a reverse-product placement effect. Have a look.

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