It takes courage to revisit a painful part of the past. In the Jay Ahn-directed video for “Eternal Sunshine” Jhené Aiko not only musters up courage, but also shares it with the world when she narrates the story of when she and her family were in car crash, and when she lost one of her brothers, Miyagi Hasani Ayo Chilombo, to cancer.
In the behind the scenes footage of “Eternal Sunshine,” premiered here on The Juice, Jhené Aiko walks us through the video’s narration. The video kicks off with Aiko prepping to step onto a boom lift where she is then shot singing 100 feet above the accident reenactment. “I do my own stunts,” Aiko jokes. In 2013, Aiko, her sister Miyoko, daughter Namiko, and Namiko’s father O’Ryan were in a car accident. Thankfully, all survived.
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“We reenacted the car accident that I was in. I’m ascending from my body. I basically died in this video,” she explains. “Miyoko and Nami, my sister and my daughter… I got them to reenact their parts. I wasn’t driving in the real accident, but for the sake of the video I am. I was in the backseat.”
Aiko’s adorable daughter also plays a younger Aiko during a later scene in which Namiko and Aiko’s nephews (who play Aiko’s brothers, Miyagi Hasani Ayo Chilombo and Jahi Chilombo) play in front of her grandmother’s house. “I would say that this is where most of the good things have happened” she says while watching the kids get caught up in a water balloon fight.
“Today we’re shooting the flashback scene of my daughter my two nephews are going to be playing me and my two brothers.”
Jhené Aiko, who is calm and positive throughout the shoot, tears up as she sits in her grandmother’s house and sees the footage filmed that day. As she thinks of her late brother Miyagi Hasani Ayo Chilombo, Aiko tears up. “We just watched what we did yesterday. This is the house we grew up in. It’s the house my brother passed away in… It was like I said it was all the best memories,” Aiko takes a minute to recoup, as she’s brought to tears reminiscing. “Our best memories were here.”