In the music video for her latest single “No Hay Ley,” Grammy Award-winning musician Kali Uchis is heading back in time, channeling the deep-rooted nostalgia for Y2K fashion and the time she once spent taking in Latin house music at clubs in Colombia.
“I kind of grew up in club life, because my parents own clubs in Colombia, and Latin house music is something that I’ve loved since I was little, but it’s something that I never actually explored for myself before,” Uchis told Vogue of embracing the genre on her first solo single in two years, which will appear on one of her two forthcoming albums – one in English, the other in Spanish. “Both albums play with a lot of different genres, and I really try when I create not to confine myself to a specific sound, but the Spanish album has a lot more dance music.”
Directed by the creative duo Torso Solutions, “No Hay Ley” places Uchis in the heart of Paris where she struts through the city in an eye-popping collection of high-fashion looks – and sometimes in nothing at all.
“Sometimes when you try to do something too Y2K, it can feel a little bit too cliche or too dated, so I was into keeping it more modern and making a video that was all about motion,” Uchis said. “I wanted to do something I hadn’t really done before.”
As she travels through narrow alleyways, arrives and departs in black limousines, and sprints down steep escalators, the singer sings about the boundless limits of love. “Hey, en el amor no hay ley / Y deja que nos miren si quieren,” she offers, which translates approximately to the idea that there are no laws in love. “No matter what we do, no matter what they say / No importa lo que digan, como ‘¿qué?’”
For “No Hay Ley,” Uchis worked with stylist Georgia Pendlebury to lock in looks from a wide range of ultra-talented designers, including Vaillant Studio, Ottolinger, KNWLS, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, and Alphonse Maitrepierre.
Uchis continued: “This song made me think of fashion. The song feels very nostalgic, very early 2000s vibe, so I wanted something kind of like that—and I wanted to bring in people from the fashion world, too.”