Princess Nokia recently told The Hundreds that Mortal Kombat’s Kitana has “always been my bitch.” The rapper says she even cosplayed the bladed fan-wielding video game babe at New York’s Comic Con. So it’s no surprise that the video Princess Nokia just launched for “Kitana,” a track off her transcendent 1992 EP, is all about finding strength in badass women.
The clip, directed by Princess Nokia herself, is a welcome addition to her growing visual universe of empowering femme imagery. A girl gang assembles on a basketball court to watch its members beast it out in boxing gear. Half of Nokia’s verses are delivered with a bloody nose. It’s a celebration of how we sharpen our friends to their fittest potential.
The song was produced by A. Trak and Lex Luger, a rare team-up with industry heavyweights by the resolutely independent Nokia. She explained how the collaboration went down in the same interview with The Hundreds:
We’ve been friends for a couple of years and we’d been discussing some stuff. We got into the studio, [A.Trak] played me three tracks, and when I heard that one I thought, “This is fucking fire!” It was aggressive and I found some of my music for it. But then he had to leave about 15 minutes in and I had to do it by myself with the engineer. It was beautiful and wound up sounding great.