Beyonce, Jay-Z – “Crazy In Love”

  We start out in a car, barreling down the street in some unnamed city. (Judging by the lack of any pedestrians on the sides of this somewhat squalid thoroughfare, it must be an Amish community of some kind, and there’s a barn-raising going on.) Jay-Z appears to be in the back of the car, or at least the inside of something, and he’s letting us know that things are super crazy right now. (Like the fact that the cameraman has basically shoved the lens into Jay-Z’s mouth and nobody is safe from his teeth until that stops happening.)

  Suddenly, the speeding car comes across a woman who has chosen to stand in the middle of the road, as if that’s a completely safe and natural thing to do. We nearly run over this woman, but then the car realizes that it’s Beyonce who has chosen to play chicken, and the car slams to a halt, because it doesn’t have an insurance policy that covers celebrity mishaps in Amish towns. Beyonce marches right up to the camera and asks us if we’re ready.

  Well, I’m not sure, Miss B. Will there be a test when we’re done? Is pain involved?

  Obviously, Beyonce doesn’t really need our permission, so she and her incredibly-tight shorts begin sashaying along the street, doing just the right moves to make her hair flip about lusciously in the wind. (The cameraman conveniently provides us a rearview shot to let us know that the rear is something to view.) Meanwhile, Jazy-Z is still hollering in the back of the car, or the sensory-deprivation tank, wherever he is, assuring us that history is in the making and doing something with his hands.

  This is apparently a signal for Beyonce to strut up the ramp to a loading dock, where she commences to do an interesting squat and then launch into her first part of the song. I guess she really, really likes wooden platforms, because she becomes very heated and starts wallering all over the dock. She does an interpretive, lusty dance that seems to be telling the story of what can happen if you straddle a washing machine right when it becomes unbalanced during the spin cycle.

  Beyonce does some spinning of her own on the woodwork, doing things with her fetching legs that make it very clear that she has a staff of personal trainers and/or some amazing genes in her bloodline. (There’s a short montage where B strikes various poses against a chain-link fence, a segment that doesn’t quite fit in with her aerobics on the dock, but I’m sure she had her reasons for this bit.) Beyonce finally ends her relationship with the platform after several more energetic moves, and does so without losing her impressive red high-heels, a magical bit of footwear artistry that brings a tear to the eyes of drag queens who happen to be watching.

  We zip to a new location, one that might be on the top of a building and appears to feature a small landing pad where rich people would park their personal helicopters when they want to impress people with their bank accounts. But Donald Trump will have to find somewhere else to land, because Beyonce is currently dancing around on the pad, sporting an outfit that might have been fashioned out of an army tent and a hairdo that resembles what Tina Turner would have looked like in 1984 if Tina hadn’t been so invested in using enough extra-firm hairspray that she created her own ozone hole. (What’s aerosol got to do with it?)

  Beyonce shimmies on the rooftop for a while, doing some cover-girl poses and coordinating her movements with the strobe-lights that have been strategically placed around her. But before we can get the full story of what this actually means, we cut to Beyonce and some of her Girl Posse strutting somewhere else. We’re possibly in an alley, or maybe the storage facility where Beyonce keeps her awards. In any case, the girls feel it’s very important that they show us what their rhythmic fannies can do when the music is just right, and so they do. The booty-shaking is accented by couture with a theme of “possible baseball tribute with a sprinkle of New Jersey Party Girl”.

  Someone apparently spent some time on the choreography with this section, because all of the girls have intricate things to do, although many of the moves consist of thrusting themselves up against a concrete wall and then breathing heavily. There’s also some random gum-chewing, reinforcing the Jersey flavor. (Is that Snooki in the background, getting drunk and continuing to make bad decisions?)

  Next we have Beyonce somewhere else, but the locale is not really clear because it’s very dark. (Did the lighting technician go on a union-ordered break?) She might be in the backseat of Jay-Z’s ride, just a guess, and she’s very emotional about something, as indicated by the way she keeps raising her arms over her head in personal anguish. Then we get a shot of someone flicking open a lighter, and then this shadowy person throws the lighter into the night where it lands on a street that has been rudely drizzled with gasoline.

  Are we suddenly watching an episode of The Sopranos?

  Cue up the gasoline igniting and the flames racing toward a car that explodes, as (presumably, based on attire) Jay-Z stands there and watches all this happen without calling 9-1-1. We get a quick montage of Beyonce struggling in the back of a car, but, interestingly enough, there are no flames in her scenes even though we have aggressive burning in the exterior shots of the unfortunate car. Bad editing? Beyonce is inflammable? Drug usage on the set? Not clear.

  Whoops, now Jay-Z is doing his rapping bit while standing near the burning car. And here comes Beyonce, wearing an interesting boa, another set of high heels, and little else. (I guess the heat from the burning vehicle is a little intense, so we can forgive her for not dressing properly.) This kicks off an extended scene where Jay-Z is rapping a lot of information that might prove useful if we paid attention, but we’re distracted by Beyonce trouncing around, hormones racing, and doing everything she can to show Jay-Z what an E-ticket ride at Disneyland can mean if you’re consenting adults. She horny.

  Hours later, after Beyonce has professionally air-humped every corner of the set, and Jay-Z has finally completed his long-ass rap about the joys of something or other, we see Beyonce (new outfit, new heels) walk up to a fire hydrant in the dark of the night and kick at the poor thing with her apparently steel-toed footwear. The hydrant starts gushing like Old Faithful, and Beyonce proceeds to bathe herself in the spray, luxuriating in the power of the forceful spurting.

  I guess the wetness does nothing to dampen Beyonce’s libido, because she then launches into another erotic interpretive dance, this one involving choreography that includes self-fondling of her booty, hair whipping that draws a line in the sand with Willow Smith, and at least 74 orgasms. By the time she’s done, the water smokes a cigarette and smiles with satisfaction. Call me?

  And we’re off again to another location, with Beyonce apparently shoving her breasts at a giant turbine fan thing, the blades whizzing dangerously while she undulates. (Really, honey? Is the itch that bad?) Happily, Beyonce finally turns away from the Danger Fan and we can see that everything is right as rain, no slicing and dicing. Now we can focus on her latest outfit, an obviously unfinished mini-dress where the upper section is barely held together by some baling wire and a prayer.

  Beyonce is quickly joined by the surviving remnants of her Girl Posse, all of them decked out in equally-flimsy sherbet-hued ensembles. It’s clearly time for another line dance, and they go at it with gusto. This round of expressionistic cha-cha involves booty-shaking that has been ramped up to a degree that an employee at the local seismographic substation had to pick up the “red phone”, conveying the news to his superior that an earthquake had just hit the Eastern seaboard.

  Luckily for us and the planet, it’s just an exuberant display of unbridled lust, nothing that truly requires a FEMA alert, and we close out the video with Beyonce and the other 30 flavors at Baskin Robbins innocently proffering their tasty goodness to anyone who wants a sample.

  And as we all know, now, it turns out the Jay-Z’s spoon was just the right fit for Beyonce’s ice cream. Mmm hmm.

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Rihanna, Jay-Z - “Umbrella (Orange Version)”

  Editor’s Note: I’m not sure why this is called the “Orange Version”, but it does sound considerably different than the radio single that dominated the summer a bit back in the day. I actually like it better, and with 20,000,000 YouTube hits, I’m thinking other people feel the same, so let’s go with this version…

  We start off with a shot of Rihanna in one of her typically trampy outfits, this one involving leather, a hat, and lots of Rihanna’s glistening sweat. She’s reclining on a fog-filled stage somewhere, probably trying to build her strength back up after saying “ella” 246 times.

  Cut to Jay-Z, also on a stage, and surrounded by a bevy of slightly-Asian beauties wearing hoodies and dark sunglasses. There’s a constant shower of sparks falling down during this segment, and I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean. It looks kind of dangerous, but Jay-Z is down with it since it seems kind of fun as long as nobody gets electrocuted. (We get brief glimpses of Rihanna still lounging on that other stage, doing the “eh…eh” part of the song.)

  Jay-Z keeps doing his rap-sing section of the song, and it’s abundantly clear that his lyrics really have nothing to do with the original words, but this is not important because it’s Jay-Z and everybody knows that you should just let him do his thang. (The slightly-Asian girls continually cast their eyes at Jay-Z like every word he raps is the most important thing that they’ve ever heard. One of the girls is so inspired that she turns around to show us that her hoodie is emblazoned with something sparkly.)

  Jay-Z finishes up and runs off to collect his paycheck. Cut to Rihanna, finally standing up after her catnap, and we can see that she’s wearing another one of those outfits where she has to be really careful with her arm movements or ta-ta’s will be set free. She performs a few dance steps, which mostly involve touching her head and shoving her booty at the camera.

  Then Rihanna does a nice “Flashdance Tribute” move, which causes giant ice blocks to melt and suddenly waves of water are splashing our girl. To deal with this deluge, Rihanna changes into a white outfit that clings to her body when it’s wet, because if the rivers are going to rise, you might as well look sexy for the rescue party. This goes on for a bit, with Rihanna slapping away the attacking water in ways that are sure to accentuate her heaving breasts.

  Oh look, now Rihanna is a ballerina walking across the stage on her toes. (Interestingly enough, we don’t see the upper half of Rihanna doing this very difficult toe-balancing, so I’m thinking “body double”.) We do get some upper-body shots of Rihanna waving an umbrella about, but you can’t see her feet. You can see that Rihanna’s current outfit is putting a lot of pressure on her nether regions. How can this girl even breathe?

  Now Rihanna is in another room, with fancy moldings on the walls and her wearing some odd fishnet stockings that indicate the girl really didn’t pay any attention in church. Somebody has given her an umbrella do dance with (imagine that, considering the name of the song) and she does so with gusto. This also goes on for a while, with Rihanna making it very clear that she loves devices that can protect her from the elements. (I hope that umbrella remembered to wear a condom.)

  Wait, what’s this? Rihanna is now completely covered in silver paint and touching herself with aggressive self-appreciation. What has this got to do with anyone standing under her umbrella? Does she have mercury poisoning? Oh my, it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with wearing clothes, because Rihanna isn’t doing so during this sequence. She strikes a number of artsy poses that let the world know she has a personal trainer. (And I’m here to tell ya, if a man tried this, the video would never make it to the airwaves. Word.)

  Okay, we’re back to Rihanna without any Rustoleum spray-paint, and she’s now invested in singing to us over her shoulder, so someone must have mentioned that this is hot in some way. Her vocalizing causes lots of extras to come running on stage with umbrellas, and a shower of sparks to start falling from the ceiling. (Didn’t Jay-Z just do the same thing a bit earlier? What up?)

  Oh, now I see the difference. The stage is now flooded with water while these umbrella people cavort about and do synchronized movements. Well, that’s a good thing, to mix electricity with water. Nothing bad can happen when you do that, right? Clearly, these dancers must not be in a union of any kind, or they wouldn’t have to do any of this life-threatening crap.

  This goes on for a while as well, probably because it costs a lot of money to flood a soundstage so you might as well make the best of it. Rihanna shows us her belly button while the extras do some water-and-sparks choreography. (The take-away from this sequence is that it’s really important to arch your back when sparks are falling on your head. And if you can synchronize your movements with other people in your posse, then things will look really cool even if you die in the process.)

  The video wraps up with Rihanna twirling her umbrella while the extras dive face-first into the deadly water gushing about the stage. To make sure that we understand Rihanna is the sexiest woman on the planet, she fondles her breasts and then beckons us to come take the place of her crappy umbrella and put out her fire.

  Sorry, honey. I am not wading into that water filled with electrocuted bodies. If you ever make it to dry land, give me a call…

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Jay-Z, Alicia Keys - "Empire State of Mind"

This little ditty is a tribute to living in New York City, so we’re basically treated to a montage of iconic landmarks and sights in the Big Apple, while Jay-Z raps about what the city does and how it changes you. But there’s an entirely different story playing out if you know how to interpret certain scenes.

We start out with shots of various buildings and street signs while the music warms up, then Jay-Z finally begins to sing in front of some building that I don’t recognize. But it must be important to him since standing in front of the thing made him burst into a rap.

Then he’s suddenly standing on a street corner, comparing himself to Frank Sinatra and making hand gestures that might possibly have deep symbolic meaning, or it might be that he just always wanted to be a traffic cop. There’s not any traffic, though. Since he’s supposedly in the middle of NYC and yet there’s not a car in sight, this is obviously a dream sequence.

Then some shout-outs to the subway, Biggie Smalls, some guy from Texas, basketball, and the apparent fact that Jay-Z is the most famous person in the world. Then the music gets a little more dramatic and suddenly we have aerial shots as we zoom over the city. It’s apparently time for a major change in the story.

And it turns out to be Alicia Keys. She’s on a street corner, wailing the chorus and pounding on a really cool piano. This thing has the New York skyline around the sides and the Statue of Liberty on top. Very nice.

But she doesn’t have a bench to sit on while working the piano, which is kind of rude. You’d think they’d have money in the budget for furniture, especially when it involves a guest star. Poor thing.

More aerial shots of the city , which I’m now starting to think mean “we really weren’t sure what to use here, so we’ll use this nice stock footage we found.”

Back to Alicia at the piano, where she’ still wailing and still doesn’t have a place to sit. This time, there’s a suspicious white van driving slowly to her right. Does the Liberace estate need the piano back? Just then, Alicia really gets her groove on and starts making this rocking movement while she’s playing, which is enjoyable and all, but she keeps looking in the wrong place for the camera, so there are some focus issues.

Now Jay-Z is back, rapping about the Yankees and the NYPD, with appropriate still shots of both. In the middle of all that is a shot of Spike Lee. I don’t know if this means he’s a big Yankees fan as well or if he’s in trouble with the NYPD for NOT doing the right thing.

Then Jay-Z kicks up the rapping, starting to really let loose with a ton of words while Alicia tries gyrating faster and faster at the piano to keep up. Some of the words in this section were annoyingly bleeped in the video version that I reviewed, so there might be something lost in translation, but Jay-Z sure knows a lot of names for taxi cabs and things that can be sold on the streets.

Brief shot of what appears to be a pregnant man, with an expression that indicates he just broke water while stepping off a curb. This is followed by Jay-Z with a whole lot of words that were not bleeped but I didn’t understand a single one of them. I think I heard “Jesus“ in there, so perhaps Jay-Z was spreading the gospel, not sure.

And here comes Alicia with the chorus again, and this time she’s joined on the street corner by Jay-Z and his hand movements. But the piano is gone. See, you turn your back for two seconds in this city and people take things.

During the “these streets will make you feel brand new” part of the chorus, Alicia starts bucking her hips like she’s got a really bad itch. Apparently “brand new” equals “horny” in Alicia’s world. She looks good, and the hair is rockin, but honey, take care of that itch.

Then Jay-Z is in a high-rise office with a view, looking all Ivy League. Based on the words, he’s letting people know that this city can turn you, so be careful with your life choices. Interestingly enough, all of the images during this part of the song are women, and the words are all about women going bad and turning into whores. Not a peep about what the men can turn into. Hmm.

Chorus again. This time Alicia and Jay-Z are gyrating around on a giant staircase lit up with red lights. (Are they warning lights? Is Alicia about to get turned bad by the city?) No, guess not, the two of them are just waving their hands in the air like they just don’t care how much something costs anymore. Woo hoo!

More aerial shots. (More “not sure what to put here”.)

Hey, the piano’s suddenly back, and Alicia’s singing something besides just the chorus. And she has quite a bit to say, along with lots of choreography and hair swinging. Still no bench, though.

Then it’s the chorus again. We haven’t heard from Jay-Z in a while. We’ve had a few glimpses of him making those hand movements and watching Alicia do things with her pelvis. But really, Alicia’s been doing more singing than him. Shouldn’t this be an Alicia Keys song featuring Jay-Z? I really don’t know what the rules are, here. Just asking.

And after the final chorus, we’re back on the giant lit-up staircase, with both of them doing some hand moves and then Jay-Z throws his arm around Alicia while she assumes what she hopes is a street pose, but really looks like something Salt N Pepa did back in the day. Jay-Z raises one hand in the air in what might be a victory sign or some type of fight the power gesture, but really looks like “this is how you stand on the subway”.

Moral of the story? If you move to New York City, be prepared for it to change your life, make sure you bring your own bench because nobody is going to just give you one, keep an eye on your piano, and make sure your agent fully understands the extent of your singing responsibilities before you sign anything. Word.


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