The name FKA Twigs is on everyone’s lips, since the release of her 2014 debut studio album LP1 and a long series of compelling, ethereal and artistic music videos, FKA Twigs has proven she’s a force to be reckoned with. The song “Papi Pacify” is taken from her 2013 extended play named EP2. It’s Co-directed by FKA twigs and Tom Beard, (the two will later go on to co-direct the video for Twigs stunning and mesmerising song “Tw-Ach” using some of the same visual techniques).

Know for her artistic and experimental style “Papi Pacify” is simultaneously sensual and unsettling. As Twigs sings, “Papi pacify our love” and “Tell me I’m the only one”, a large man cradles her head, alternating from stroking her face to shoving his fingers down her throat in a hypnotic loop, he literally pacifies her. The video is a performance on dominance and submissiveness .The same things that make it uncomfortable to watch, are the things that make it fascinating. From the voyeuristic feeling we get as Twigs remotely stares at us through the lens of the camera, as a hand encircles her neck; to the rhythmic light play that almost always keeps her partners face in shadow, while making sure we’re focused on Twigs, to the close up shots of skin on skin. There is a beauty that is complicated, as Twigs sings about manipulation and lies we watch as she appears to be physically controlled, but there is also an undercurrent of power, a distant feeling that she’s in charge despite what our eyes see.

“I love feeling dark,” she says. “The whole of my life, when people are getting to know me, they’re like, ‘You’re so cute!’ But how I look is not how I am. If you’re going to get to know me on the body that God gave me, then you’re going to get a shock at some point.” – FKA Twigs (Quote from Rollingstone interview, 20/11/2014)