Video: Yasiin Bey x Muhammad Ali – “Float”

In the latest “Greatest Words” tribute, Yasiin Bey revisits Muhammad Ali‘s most famous lines: “Float like a butterfly / Sting like a bee” in what may be the most satisfying spot in the series yet, produced as promotions for designer Louis Vuitton. Like the others in the series, this is a collaboration with calligrapher Niels Shoe Meulman, who tags up the word “float” in grand style on the canvas of the boxing ring. But the most striking parts of the poem maybe Ali’s less remembered couplets (“I’ll drown A drink of water / I’ll kill a dead tree…”) which, in one of those things-go-in-cycles moments, Bey manages to make sound as raw as the latest RZA x Black Keys collaboration. Watch below: