If you love art and visiting museums, watching “Apeshit” is an enjoyable experience. The couple speak about achieving fame, success and keeping it in the songs lyrics. The strong female and black empowerment themes are throughout “ApeShit” single and Everything is Love album. The couple, who wed a decade ago and have three children, use the rare art to follow the songs lyrics flaunting gratitude for success, wealth and fame. The song follows the gratitude, dynasty building, crazy crowds and luxury lifestyle of Beyonce and Jay-Z. The art in “Apeshit” is very intentional. Here’s a breakdown of the creative detail and my thoughts on The Carters (Jay-Z and Beyonce’s real last name and band name for the joint project) Everything is Love album. The video’s popularity earned it 41 million YouTube views in one week. The theme of female and black empowerment are weaved within the artistry of the video. There hasn’t been a video with this kind of interesting detail captivating audiences since TLC’s “Waterfalls” released in 1995.Īt first glance “Apeshit” it looks like another music superstar filming a video on location, until you examine the combination of the lyrics, wardrobe and art. Beyonce and Jay-Z just released the best music video of both careers spanning two decades of Hip-hop and R&B. ![]() Hip-Hop Icons Beyonce and Jay-Z used famed Paris-based Louvre Museum as the backdrop for the hit single “Apeshit” video. And considering that the Louvre now offers a 90-minute walking tour based on the “Apeshit” video, considering this video so boldly and unapologetically exists, the Carters have, as they say, made it.Most musicians film videos on private jets, boats and dance clubs. Portraits of people of color may not blanket the walls of the Louvre (save for nameless, passive subjects as in Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s Portrait D’Une Négresse, also glimpsed in the video ), but Beyoncé and Jay-Z here issue a corrective, disrupting the Western art world’s practice of tokenistic black representation and instead, spotlighting their already-renown bodies and beings-right, front, and center-as heirs to the kingdom. My projection of that was that they were embodiments of goddesses.” As choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui told Pitchfork of the dancers in the video, “When they are inside of that space-just right on the stairs or suddenly moving in the group-you have the feeling that they could be those ancient mythological goddesses of the hunt or of wisdom. The Carters flank the canvas (mirroring a selfie they snapped in the same spot in 2014), pictured in a manner and image that dares to be as potently and powerfully iconic as the painting itself. ![]() Of course, there’s Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa too, which bookends the video. Video for “Apeshit” by The Carters, 2018, featuring the Winged Victory of Samothrace, directed by Ricky Saiz. Their conquest is writ large enough in the featured artworks from Jacques-Louis David’s The Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon to the imposing Greek sculpture Winged Victory of Samothrace, while throughout the track, rings the refrain, “I can’t believe we made it.” Video for “Apeshit” by The Carters, 2018, featuring The Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David, directed by Ricky Saiz. ![]() In still and stately poses, the couple stages an intervention and claims themselves a place in the Louvre’s halls, announcing their arrival in the hallowed tradition of art, whether you like it or not. The art featured in this video, though, is not hung with air quotes or treated with an over-awed hand, but pictured alongside a more contemporary art form: the power union of Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Video for “Apeshit” by The Carters, 2018, featuring the Venus de Milo, directed by Ricky Saiz. In the Carters’ universe, where wealth resides, art is not very far behind. In “Apeshit,” too, lyrics on “expensive fabrics” and “expensive habits,” and a litany of luxury brand names (Richard Mille, Lamborghini, Alexander Wang, to name a few) are aligned with snatches of art and opulent views of the Louvre. Of the latter, both Beyoncé and Jay-Z are no strangers to: their videos for “7/11” and “Picasso Baby” name dropped art casually enough. ![]() And rightly so, for there is a lot to unpack-from the video’s juxtaposition of black bodies against an Eurocentric art tradition to the added framing of art as commodity. Since neither the couple nor director Ricky Saiz have shed light how these artworks were picked for the film, rants, raves, and essays have been generated on its significance and symbolism. Filmed in the Louvre, the short sees the Carters posing, cavorting, and generally hanging out amid the museum’s world-beating art collection. Last month, the internet naturally went apeshit for “Apeshit,” the first video to emerge from Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s surprise joint project, Everything is Love.
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