My heart goes out

God, it must be so stressful to be Kanye and to always have to be coming up with the freshest music videos. This is amazing. I feel for him.

Like in his mind-blowing Spike Jonze directed video for "Flashing Lights," Kanye adds multiple new levels of meaning to his lyrics with the video imagery. On the surface, the song seems to be about a doomed and obsessive love affair. The contrast in the video between Kanye dressed in white in a sterile white environment and tribal dancers could fit in the context of a love story. The dancers could be stereotypically symbolic of the irrational, wild forces of passion, that yeezy must keep locked down, but which he can't prevent from invading his ordered life and thoughts. But I think that this song and video are also symbolic of Kanye's contested and ambivalent relationship with the media. Even though Kanye is political and vocal about black issues, because his music is different he is often criticized for being whitewashed, not black, or street enough. His efforts to redefine or transcend the genre of hip hop have been met with a huge critical backlash. Lyrics like:

"Gotta keep it going
Keep the lovin’ going
Keep it on a role
Only god knows
If I’ll be with you
Baby I’m confused
You choose, you choose"

accompanying a shot of kanye in white collapsed in a corner next to a looming masked tribal figure seem to recast the video as a story about ye's struggle with the limited and stereotyped roles projected onto black performers in mainstream media. Despite the final repetition of "you lose, you lose," which hints at the culturally stunting consequences of forcing performers into these roles, the final imagery of the sexy rave-y day-glo tribal dancers seem to suggest a positive ending. With this synthesis of styles, Kanye is offering a visual representation of a new musical catagory he is inventing for himself. On the other hand, these gigantic idol-like women could be representative of the new fetish, the new way primitivism is present in our post-modernist information age. I don't know, what do you think?