Show and tell: Kanye West, “Power”
Posted on 06. Aug, 2010 by jessekg in Music, Uncategorized
First off, sorry for two Kanye posts. We sort of have an unwritten rule about that, but have you seen Kanye’s video for Power yet? With the amount of hype it was getting, it being a “painting” and all, not a video, according to Ye’s twitter account, I have to admit I was definitely curious. After watching it a few times now (one good thing about it being short), I definitely warmed up to it. Excessive? Yes. Egotistical and obnoxious? Absolutely. But that’s what you expect from Kanye anyways, right? The real highlight of this, I think, is the director, who you could say has made a good attempt at elevating the music video towards high art realms.
Apparently Kanye sought out Italian-Canadian Marco Brambilla to do something original, and I can’t blame him after seeing Brambilla’s epic and cool “civilisation” piece commissioned for the Standard Hotel elevators.
The “Power” video uses a similar technique as “Civilisation”, but is not only much more polished looking, it’s also way more Kanye (read: Scantily clad women pouring water over their heads, scantily clad women looking like they are about to make out, scantily clad women crawling on all fours, standing around, dancing, etc, etc. You get the point.) Plus there is some serious bling (see image above), which rumours say is a representation of the Illuminati secret society. Kanye is, of course, the Ceaser figure in a moving neo-classical decoupage, and as the stunning imagery evolves round him, it all of a sudden makes a few quick cuts and ends on a high note: two flying swordsmen coming down on Ye’s head.
Although the video does come a bit late after the release of the single (although Kanye doesn’t seem to care about this sort of thing) that actually makes it better – it’s a video, or an installation art piece, or whatever you want to call it, just for arts’ sake. It could be trying to make a statement about the twisted excess of celebrity, and how he feels everyone is out for his head, but I think it’s better not to think of it too much at all really (sort of like Inception that way), as it pretty much beats into our thick skulls that Kanye is the most egotistical artist out there – but does it ever look nice making that point.
On a side note, I was trying to find any version of this video that I could embed, rather than just link up top, so went on to MTV for the first time in years. No Kanye, but luckily I stumbled across this instead. Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell being hilarious on “the Knife Show.”
Simon
Aug 8th, 2010
Kanye does 300!