Empire State of Mind
by Jay Z feat. Alicia Keys - 2009 (Watch it now)
Directed by: Hype Williams
Photography by: John Perez
Oh the pictures,
they all pop in and out
off the screen,
mirroring the beats of the tune.
It´s New York we see here,
its sites and citizens
ushered by a local.
Jay Z revisits his
trajectory in this
almost nostalgic take
on his own carrier and his
relationship with his home town.
And thou his lyrics are
for the most part as personal
and self-containing as it can be
the "popping images"
are, in contrast, as universal
and collective as
the city itself.
These pictures are powerful
in its contextualisations,
for it takes the
ordinary citizen
of the town,
at equal grounds
with Jay Z, as if His story
was only a sample
of thousands of others,
either by acknowledging their
casualties or by appearing
in regular (casual) New York
corners and buildings,
either way complicity
is the result.
They are all
black and white,
as thou they were documents,
or shot in the 'old
and glorious days',
so if the song by itself
fails in being an
anthem,
the video sure
balances the equation.
Hyde William´s usage
of uncommon
displaying of pictures
and frames in the screen
never served
a better purpose
than in this work,
it wrapped the song around
with meaning and that
without being cheap
or obvious,
This "popping image effect"
truly took the otherwise
slide show structure
into a living and
'in motion' one,
since combined with these beats.
And as for the anthem idea,
well Alicia Keys´s share in the song
is just that, a link between
Z´s private monolog
and the rest of the world.
Ranging from
traditional 'credibility' colors
to the bright 'royal' red
stair case in the end,
[And I´m not going into the whole
culture of ostentatiously]
as the city of
eternal yesterdays
gives way to
a new and brighter one,
in this Jay Z´s ode
to that town [and himself ] .
(watch it now)
