There are several times in the video for Kelly Rowland’s new single “Coffee” were the sheer beauty of Blackness takes your breath away. For the multiple Grammy award winning artist, that’s exactly the point.
“I want to celebrate the women in video—every shade, every coffee color, every curve, every essence and what they gave me,” Rowland tells ESSENCE. “My intention I set for the video was to take the light in yourself and your sexuality [and put it in] a God perspective, in a way where you don’t have to get any approval from anybody else.”
Rowland continues: “Sometimes when women stand in our own sexuality, without approval from any external source, I think that there comes a different perspective, a different outlook, a different feeling, and usually we don’t even realize we’re doing it, but I think society has kind of made it that way, especially with the Black woman.”
The video, directed by Steven Gomillion, sensually pivots around Rowland and several models minimally styled in Left on Friday swimsuits, ranging in hues of brown—chocolate, cappuccino and espresso. Miami’s backdrop provided the azure waters and glorious sun, but for Rowland, having diversified representations of Black skin color, hair textures and body sizes were the optics she wanted front and center.
“I just wanted the video to come across like, ‘Here we are standing in all of our beauty, in all of our coffee colored shades, in all of our greatness and you going to take this in.’ And that’s what I wanted and that’s what I want every woman to feel like. So that was my intention, and to be honest, I was hungry for too much of that video.”
Watch Rowland’s “Coffee” below.