Khalid’s latest music video is a big, sloppy kiss to Silicon Valley - The Verge

AVs, drone delivery, smart home surveillance are all on display in the new song.

Grammy-nominated singer Khalid has a new album coming out, and the first single, “New Normal,” is as smooth and breezy as a summer afternoon, which is weird because the video that accompanies the track is pretty much a venture capitalist’s dream come true.

The video depicts a futuristic utopia full of skyscraper gardens, autonomous vehicles, drone deliveries, and smart homes.

Khalid’s video is brimming with real products from real companies, not generic versions — a sign that the singer maybe had some input from Silicon Valley in crafting his love letter to our surveillance capitalist nightmare of a future.

The singer then enters what I can only describe as a sanitized version of Korben Dallas’ apartment in The Fifth Element (another more accurate depiction of our chaotic and punitive future compared to this)!

Is it now a smart home hub.

Khalid sings into some sort of smart home panel on his wall, and his vocals are transmitted through the delivery robots apparently?

Then, in what appears to be a particularly shameless moment of product placement, the singer remotely pays for something on his smart home panel (for what? it’s unclear) using Chime, a startup said to be worth $14.5 billion?

As the video winds down, we end on the image of Khalid opening his blinds to see a giant billboard outside his window advertising rocket trips.