Beyonce’s video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” may have already garnered nearly 20 million views on YouTube, but it’s not the best of the many great music videos of 2008. Here are five that are better –– and none of them rip off Bob Fosse. You can see my picks for the 5th through 10th best videos of 2008 (yes, including Beyonce) at my blog, alsolikelife.com/shooting.
5. Killer Mike featuring Ice Cube, “Pressure” Directed by Giovanni Hidalgo
One can only imagine how many hours director Hidalgo spent ripping and mixing clips off the internet, cable news, and who knows where else, but watching the result is like a long night’s cram session for a Black liberation theory class in the space of a song.
The sheer breadth of footage is breathtaking, flashing everything from archival newsreel to Hollywood clips to graphic crime videos. The shock-and-awe montage makes it hard to arrive at a coherent thesis for grappling with the laundry list of social ills laid out by both the lyrics and visuals, full of jarring juxtapositions that radically recontextualize familiar images and figures into an alternative universe of hip-hop resistance. Even Barack Obama doesn’t come away unscathed: his “Yes We Can” iconography is eventually followed by a clip of him dancing with Ellen Degeneres that’s as ingratiating as Stepin Fetchit. The lasting effect is a purposeful distancing from the daily stream of images that spoon-feed us into complacency, something that viewers of any race or background can take to heart.
As Ice Cube says, “I’m here to deprogram you.” A machine gun spray of media-fueled dissonance, “Pressure” accomplishes in six minutes what took Oliver Stone’s JFK three hours.
Zoom in on: 2:46. The juxtaposition of Saddam Hussein and O.J. Simpson at their respective trails exemplifies the mad method of this video: a knee-jerk provocation, an inspired association, or both.
Compare to: Terry Lynn, ”The System”
