Mike D’s “Secrets” Video Refuses to Stay a Concert Film

The video for Mike D’s “Secrets Pts. I & II” is built on a simple refusal. It was shot at his recent show at New York’s Knockdown Center, and every time it looks ready to settle into ordinary concert footage, the camera rolls into portrait mode or turns a full 180, leaving the crowd hanging from the ceiling while Mike D sings “I got secrets” over synths and drums that echo into the room.

The director is Ari Marcopoulos, the Dutch photographer who shot the Beastie Boys between 1991 and 1996 and made their “Something’s Got to Give” video. In a Substack post, Mike D described Marcopoulos working the room with a pass, filming without being noticed until Mike D looked over his shoulder and saw him at the back of the stage. Marcopoulos sent over a few edits, they went back and forth a little, and that was the video.

“Secrets Pts. I & II” comes from Thank You, Mike D’s debut solo album and his first work since the death of Adam Yauch. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, he said he had to slow the process down, starting from the assumption that everything needed to be new before relaxing into the fact that certain things are inescapably him. He framed the shift as having to be more of a leader.

That is the tension the clip works with. The record is a reckoning with a voice that was always partly shared. The video, tilting and flipping, keeps that voice partly out of frame.