With one long summer in front of them, RUN THE JEWELS – aka KILLER MIKE and EL-P – have released a video for their Zack de la Rocha collaboration “Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)”. The clip was directed by A.G. Rojas and it features a gripping battle between two men: a cop and an unarmed black man. The parts are played by actors Shea Whigham (Boardwalk Empire) and Keith Stanfield (Straight Outta Compton), and if you haven’t hit the play button by now, you might want to do so. In regards to the project’s concept, Rojas writes:
“When Run the Jewels sent me this, 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.”
Read Rojas’ full excerpt over at Pitchfork; Run The Jewels 2 is out now on Mass Appeal Records