FKA twigs attempts to break free from an invisible force in Don’t Judge Me music video

FKA twigs recently bared her soul as she detailed the alleged domestic abuse she faced from ex Shia LaBeouf. 

And the Grammy nominee has channeled her pain into art, putting together an entire album during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She attempts to break free from an invisible force in her new music video for Don’t Judge Me, which she recorded with Headie One and Fred Again, her first new song since opening up about the alleged abuse.

The 33-year-old wrote on Instagram: ‘So proud to release Don’t Judge Me into the world. This project is very personal and special to me.

‘It was an honour to shoot with Kara Walker’s fountain exploring the interconnection of Black history between Africa, America and Europe. Thank you to everyone for making Don’t Judge Me come to life.’

The video opens on FKA (whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett), sitting alone in a dimly-lit opulent corridor.

It then fades in on details of artist Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus, a giant white fountain unveiled in 2019.

Modeled after the Victoria Memorial monument at Buckingham Palace, it counters romantic historical revisionism with statues of racist Black caricatures, depicting the Transatlantic slave trade. 

Dancers clad in all black begin to eerily rise from the ground around the fountain, as it cuts back to FKA singing from her chair in the vast open room. 

She sings: ‘Hold me in your arms, say we’ll make it through (Don’t judge me) / I got a precious heart open for you (I know that shit fuckery) / Say why you’re breakin’ for me every day (Didn’t love me) / I’ll send the precious kinda love your way.’

The British artist gets out of her chair and begins dancing toward the door, before an invisible force drags back across the room and to her seat.

She makes several attempts to escape her unseen captor, but ends up flying across the room as she’s pulled back.

With a video directed by Emmanuel Adjei (co-director of Beyoncé’s Black Is King), Don’t Judge Me is an expansion of Headie One and Fred Again’s Judge Me (Interlude).

FKA recently promoted the song on the BBC podcast Grounded with Louis Theroux, where she said she was left with PTSD after splitting from Shia LaBeouf, 34.

It comes just a month after she filed a lawsuit against the actor for physical, mental, and emotional abuse, which he mostly denied, but said he has to ‘accept accountability for those things I have done.’ 

She started to become aware of him becoming more ‘jealous and controlling’ as she started to notice the ‘little things you could do wrong that could take away from the happiness.

‘For me it was being nice to a waiter or being polite to somebody that could be seen as me flirting or want to engage in some sort of relationship with somebody else when I’m literally just ordering pasta and being polite.’

The Magdalene artist added: ‘I was told that I knew what he was like, and if I loved him I wouldn’t look men in the eye. So that was my reality for a good four months towards the end of the relationship, that I wasn’t allowed to look men in the eye.’ 

She went on to explain that she would look at the ground when out in public together and even began to isolate herself from her friends and family.

FKA explained: ‘I just was living a very regimented and contained life that I felt got me in the least trouble.’

She also claimed that she was expected to meet a daily quota of affection and even said that LaBeouf expected her to kiss him a certain number of times and reiterate how much she cared for him several times but somehow it still wasn’t enough.

The Mirrored Heart hitmaker said: ‘He would wake me up in the night to accuse me of all sorts of things. Accuse me of staring at the ceiling and thinking about ways to leave him… accusing me of wanting to be with somebody else but it would be, always – I’d say between like four and seven in the morning.’

She claimed that the experience took its toll on her for a period of time, even after their relationship had ended.

FKA said: ‘For a long time anything that woke me up in the night, even if it was just my dog, or a noise outside, or just needing to go to the bathroom, it could trigger a really intense panic attack.

‘I was left with PTSD from that, which again is just something that I don’t think we really talk about as a society just in terms of the healing when leaving, and how much work that has to be done to recover, to get back to the person that you were before.’ 

She said the thought of leaving him was ‘genuinely impossible,’ adding: ‘I felt so controlled and I felt so confused and I felt so low, beneath myself, that the fear of leaving and knowing I had all this work to do to get back to just feeling okay, it was completely overwhelming.’

On December 11, FKA filed a lawsuit against Shia, accusing the actor of ‘relentless abuse,’ according to People.

The lawsuit, first obtained by The New York Times, was filed at the Los Angeles Superior Court, with the singer alleging that Shia physically and sexually assaulted her and battered her.

She claimed he knowingly gave her a sexually transmitted disease during their year long relationship.

The exes began dating in 2018 after she was cast in his movie Honey Boy and they split in spring 2019, with the singer saying she found the courage to leave him with the help of a therapist.