"Video for RTJ & Zack de la Rocha's "Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)""
"When Run The Jewels sent me this track, I knew we had the opportunity to create a film that means something. I felt a sense of responsibility to do just that. We had to exploit the lyrics and aggression and emotion of the track, and translate that into a film that would ignite a valuable and productive conversation about racially motivated violence in this country. It's provocative, and we all knew this, so we were tasked with making something that expressed the intensity of senseless violence without eclipsing our humanity. For me, it was important to write a story that didn’t paint a simplistic portrait of the characters of the Cop and Kid. They're not stereotypes. They're people - complex, real people and, as such, the power had to shift between them at certain points throughout the story. The film begins and it feels like they have been fighting for days, they’re exhausted, not a single punch is thrown, their violence is communicated through clumsy, raw emotion. They've already fought their way past their judgments and learned hatred toward one another. Our goal was to highlight the futility of the violence, not celebrate it.”
For El-P of Run the Jewels “this is a vision of a seemingly never-ending struggle whose participants are pitted against each other by forces originating outside of themselves.”
Adds partner Killer Mike "this video represents the futile and exhausting existence of a purgatory-like law enforcement system. There is no neat solution at the end because there is no neat solution in the real world. However, there is an opportunity to dialogue and change the way communities are policed in this country. Salutes to AG Rojas for his unique take on the subject matter and to Shea and Keith for giving us their all and bringing it to life."
2. "RE: Video for RTJ & Zack de la Rocha's "Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fu..." In response to Reply # 0
Very rarely do videos make me like a song more... it's even more rare when I alraedy love the song, but damn this video is brilliant.
Also sometimes I forget the content of Killer Mike's verse cuz of how hard and energetic the track is.
Fashion slave, you protestin' to get in a fuckin' look book Everything I scribble's like an anarchist's cookbook (Look good, posin' in the centerfold of Crook Book) Black on black on black with the ski mask, that is my crook look How you like my stylin', bruh?, ain't nobody smilin', bruh 'Bout to turn this mothafucka up like Riker's Island, bruh Where my thuggers and my crippers and my blooders and my brothers? When you niggas gon' unite and kill the police, mothafuckas? Or take over a jail, give them COs hell The burnin' of the sulfur, goddamn I love the smell Now get to pillow torchin', where the fuck the warden? And when you find him, we don't kill him, we just waterboard him We killin' them for freedom cause they tortured us for boredom And even if some good ones die, fuck it, the Lord'll sort 'em
I assumed they would have a video for this song that featured them a lot more, especially since Zach is on the song and agreed to be in the video. The fact that they were cool with only being in the beginning of the video only adds to the message of the video in my opinion.
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