Vince Staples – Blackberry Marmalade [Video]

Vince Staples shares “Blackberry Marmalade,” a tense new song and video from his upcoming album, “Cry Baby,” due June 5.

Staples doesn’t ease into his next chapter. “Blackberry Marmalade” opens the rollout for his upcoming album “Cry Baby” with a record that feels tense, jagged, and deliberately uncomfortable.

Built around a noisy, distorted pulse rather than a clean rap single structure, the track gives Staples space to work in his usual deadpan register while the writing circles paranoia, violence, ideology, and the numbness that comes with watching all of it play out in public. The refrain—“Promise me you won’t gun me down”—sits at the center of the song, turning the hook into something closer to a warning than a release.

The video, co-directed by Vince and Bradley J. Calder, pushes that tension even further. Framed like a first-person shooter, it follows Staples through a graphic, deliberately unsettling scene that ends with a mass shooting in a diner and a Martin Luther King Jr. quote about extremism. YouTube has age-restricted the clip, but Staples has been clear about wanting the message seen rather than softened.

“Blackberry Marmalade” is set to appear on “Cry Baby,” Vince Staples’ new album due June 5. The project will follow 2024’s “Dark Times” and is expected to mark his first full-length release through Loma Vista.

Watch the video below.