Thursday, August 5th 2010
News: Kanye West
Kanye’s Portrait Of Power
Despite hype that the big premiere of Kanye West’s new video for Power would happen tonight on MTV, what we actually got after sitting through Jersey Shore was an edited, heavily interrupted version of a clip we had found earlier in the day, presumed to be a teaser for a longer work. So here that is. While still short, it’s more than what all the MTV viewers got:
Kanye says it’s not a video, but a “moving painting.” As director Marco Brambilla explained in an interview with Vulture:
“…It’s a video portrait of Kanye… It visualizes power, and him as the icon as power, and then at the end of the piece it challenges the power that I set up at the beginning. It’s an elliptical piece of storytelling.
…He approached me via my gallery and he wanted to do something that wasn’t a music video. He wanted a video work that would accompany the music. I said, “That’s great, because I don’t do music videos.” I wanted to give it an epic feeling. The song feels very personal, but the orchestration and the production of the track is epic and I wanted to give it something hypersensational and exaggerated.”
Despite our frustration over getting even less than we expected, the visuals are, as Kanye might say, rather dope, and the song’s got us excited for his forthcoming fifth studio album. Which sadly won’t be titled Good Ass Job.
Sick visuals, but the misuse of King Crimson still pisses me off.
Extremely well done visuals.
Really cool video but where is the rest of the song at? What they showed on MTV last night is all that his website has on it as well. Are we to the point where our attention spans are so short that they don’t even make videos for full songs? It was like a video for a ringtone.
I despise Kanye West…but this video looks like nothing I have ever seen. Can’t wait to see the rest.
It’s been a little while now, but I’ve gotta say this video is on some next level shit. Short, censored, whatever the case…. whether we like it or not, Kanye and GaGa are the megastars of our generation. They are the new Michael and Madonna.
i agreed with you up until you invoked the name of the king. this generation does not have a michael. kanye is no michael. michael was an utter genius, and a child prodigy. i love this video/painting thing, and i’m a bigger and bigger fan of kanye as time goes on. but comparing him to michael in any way is blasphemy.
ok maybe that was a little extreme on the michael loving, but seriously. it’s like elton john, lennon/mccartney, michael… that’s royalty. kanye is more on the level of cobain or axl or vedder. a superstar, but not a deity.
hey Skwerl,
I agree with you, the comparison doesn’t work. I’m so much with Mr. Fernando up there, it’s really a misuse of KING CRIMSON all the way.