Last Friday, Kanye West revealed the visual for “Famous” in front of an audience of thousands at The L.A. Forum, and many more sitting at home watching the live feed of the event on Tidal. Most people were expecting West to pull out something unexpected, but even then, the tableau that The Life of Pablo rapper put together for his latest visual creation was something else.
To summarize the video, the track plays as camera pans over 12 people laying in the same bed, fully naked. The people in the bed are: (left to right) George Bush, Anna Wintour, Donald Trump, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Taylor Swift, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian West, Ray J, Amber Rose, Caitlyn Jenner and Bill Cosby. At the end of the video, it is revealed that these people are actually wax figures, and the video states "thank you to the following people for being famous," and then names the people that are laying in the bed. So far, the audience has had mixed reviews. Some believe that Kanye West is a visionary and a genius for using Vincent Desiderio’s “Sleep” painting as inspiration. Others are calling it an “unoriginal concept of someone else's masterpiece.”
Whichever side you may be on, you do have to admit that this is a provocative piece meant to elicit reactions. It is definitely different from stereotypical hip-hop videos. The video continues Mr. West’s need for pushing the genre’s visual boundaries. At the same time, many people are curious as to why he went about creating the video the way he did and if it’s simply just clickbait meant to keep his name in the headlines. In a world where people are so immersed with what’s going on online, the entertainment industry almost has shock value down to a science. Management teams for celebrities are constantly theorizing “what will make people listen to our music/watch our movies/read articles about us?”
Even on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, it’s no coincidence that the posts and videos with the highest amount of likes and views are the ones with the crazy titles and bright and colorful ads. It’s psychologically stimulating, and without even thinking about it, we’re suddenly sucked into learning more about products we weren’t even initially interested in. With clickbait becoming so popular especially as society is getting more modernized, it is starting to feel as if entertainers are churning out the same material just with different titles and creative and out of the box thinking is slowly coming to an end.
So where really does the fine line stand between scheming and inspiring? Is Kanye West’s new video solely meant to rack in the views and comments with headlines like “Kanye West and Taylor Swift in bed!” Or is there some genuine meaning to the video? The addition of the reference to Vincent Desiderio’s “Sleep” painting coupled with the inclusion of many of today’s most talked about celebrities seems to be a unique spin to Mr. West’s “Famous.” I for one, have never seen the concept done before so for that I do think that Kanye and his team were different just enough to step outside of the boundaries.
