Runkus, Tarrus Riley Team Up With Clarks, Delicious Vinyl For ‘Make It Breathe’ Video: Watch

Runkus teams up with Tarrus Riley to release a brand new video for the single Make It Breathe. The track is featured on Runkus’ IN:SIDE debut album.

Runkus is a capable lyricists and devout sound specialist, who maintains an idiosyncratic approach towards his releases and as such is hands-on in his recording experiences.

“In a time where it’s hard to breathe and it’s such a busy time mentally, spiritually, emotionally, what we really need to do is just chill,” Runkus remarked about Make It Breathe. “Especially in a time where this [Covid-19] virus makes it hard to breathe, we definitely need to protect our breath even more; our actual breath and figuratively, our breath of life.”

The new visuals, produced via a collaboration between shoe behemoth Clarks Originals and Los Angeles-based indie record outfit Delicious Vinyl Island, were captured in Portmore, St Catherine.

“What better way to tell the story than with children? They are the future. So we showed them escaping to go to the playground; it seems simple but children going to the playground right now is almost nonexistent because of what’s going on right now [with the global pandemic],” director Mykal ‘Director Kush’ Cushnie said, while documenting how conceptualized and executed the video shoot.

The collaboration between the Runkus and Riley – which started out with a Funk beat that later evolved into Reggae – makes all the sense in the world, considering the similarities between them. The duo not only sport dreadlocks, but are musical multi-hyphenates who sing, deejay and compose music, as well as play instruments.

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Make It Breathe – which is produced by Jevaughn ‘Alpha Unit’ Jones – recounts the endless cycle of hardship and challenges being met by people overall, but more specifically those who have to contend with being among the lower socioeconomic sectors of society.

“I know it rough, I know it tough, but lift your head my brother don’t cry. I know it rough, I know it tough, but lift your head my sister don’t cry,” the duo sings on the single. Before, in a subsequent lyric, the composition declares “struggle ah neva stranger to wi, poor coming like ah neighbor to wi.”

However, the single also doles out encouragement and hope with lines like, “one wrong move den ah lone cemetery; one right move, and the world at your feet.”

Much like Riley, the talented young musician is charged to carefully craft his own musical style while cultivating an individual journey in a sometimes-difficult-to-navigate industry. Both singers are second-generation artists, who bear striking likenesses to and are traversing similar career paths to those of their famous parents; for Runkus, it’s his dad Determine, and ‘Singy Singy,’ his dad, the late Jimmy Riley.

“Daddy fight the system hard, with spirit of a warrior. Protect wi from di snakes in di garden, mek sure seh wi basket always full,” Riley coincidentally sings on the track. While Runkus, in a press release, further expands on the same narrative, adding “so we need to ensure that we don’t fall short of the blessings that need to be given to us from life itself.”