For benefit of the uninitiated, guerrilla music video makers High 5 Collective are a group that likes to, as they put it, “make art for artists that inspire us” — making high-quality web videos for artists like Frank Ocean, the Weeknd and Arcade Fire in the past. And now what they’ve done with “No Church In The Wild,” the first track on Jay-Z and Kanye’s Watch The Throne that also features Frank Ocean, is created a really stunning, thought-provoking piece of art. Seriously.
In fact, this — featuring a runaway white slave chased down and whipped by his black masters as an American flag burns — effectively turning American history upside-down, is downright incendiary. I can just see it being used by Fox News personalities as an example of the evils of hip-hop, nevermind the fact that Jay-Z and Kanye West had nothing to do with creating it. Just wait. One of those gasbags will try to connect those dots. Just remember where you heard it first.