Synopsis

The video unfolds as a slow, hallucinatory tableau rather than a conventional performance clip. Tricky appears in a dark, mutable environment populated by reptilian figures, snakes and aquatic-looking women, while colored layers split, multiply and distort the bodies on screen. A separate image of a woman lying in water gives the otherwise dreamlike imagery a grave, almost funereal pull. The result is less a linear story than a visual descent into an uncanny world where identity, flesh and space are constantly changing.

Factoids & Trivia

• "Makes Me Wanna Die" was released as a single from Tricky's 1996 album *Pre-Millennium Tension*, while the music video is dated 1997.

• Martina Topley-Bird supplies the song's prominent vocal, continuing the creative partnership that had been central to Tricky's early work.

• The video's imagery has been discussed in academic writing for its use of split color layers, visual doubling and continuously mutating forms.

• Tricky is presented in imagery resembling a humanoid serpent, surrounded by reptilian and aquatic motifs. The woman submerged in water has also been compared to the tragic figure of Ophelia in Pre-Raphaelite art.

• The single reached No. 29 on the UK Singles Chart, giving one of the more experimental tracks from *Pre-Millennium Tension* a measurable commercial presence.