One thing that I’ll say about Caviar Gabe is that he probably doesn’t actually eat much caviar. This, is judging by his debut music video for Jungle Cat, in which the bucket-hat-clad rapper cruises the streets of Jozi on foot and by the backseat of an old Merc asking “What are you doing?’ He just doesn’t strike me as the type to eat fish eggs, but if he rapped by any other name would it still sound as sweet?
Caviar Gabe’s Jungle Cat is about the power we have inside of us to fight for what we believe in and to fight back against what we don’t. That, despite our fears, there’s a jungle cat inside of us waiting to break out, and that we have the power to be anything that we believe we are. I doubt he’s heard it, but the whole thing reminds me of a line in a song by a band called Harlem Shakes. “I’m sick of dressing like a human when I’m feeling like a leopard,” is from Strictly Game, and I feel like it sums up Jungle Cat despite the two songs sounding nothing alike.
The South African rapper with Native American, Jamaican and British roots describes his influences as 90s hip-hop and trap, which is evident in both the visuals and the sounds. The video has an old school skate video opening feel before getting glitched up. It features McCheeseburger violence, although the lyrical reference is to macking down a muffin. I assume they woke up too late on the day of the video shoot, so I won’t hold it against them. The video also features typical rap video tropes like close-ups of Nikes and weed, rapping on a rooftop, and shots from below like that look from a psychedelic Sisqo video.
