Part 1 of a series where we over-analyze pop music videos.
Envelopes are being pushed all over the music video world, not just in Erykah Badu’s recent Window Seat video. Usher declared his society-challenging intentions in the disarmingly complex short film from 2008 (I guess we could call music videos that?) “Love in This Club” by Usher featuring Young Jeezy even has a Matrix (2): Reloaded quality to it in its flashy yellow-gold-on-blackness lighting, like the scene from that uneven follow-up to 1999’s genre-breaking The Matrix where the multiethnic survivors of the Zion settlement sensually rave together in a momentary break from fighting a bleak galaxy dominated by computer-monsters.
“I want to make love in the club” croons Usher – then, what could be a disembodied bouncer/security chorus interrupts “Heyy…” as if to put to kibosh on the love-in-club-making unfolding on top of the precious-gem-studded, deep pile plush booth-beat.
This club is weird – Keri Hilson keeps slinking out of nowhere and draping herself sexily on Usher’s perplexed-expression-ed belting hunk, to which he reacts the way that Usher knows how to react – and things and people keep disappearing – while some of hip-hop’s superstars show up sunglass-ed and astounded for just a moment to be handed a length of diamonds (Blood diamonds? We wonder when Kanye West leans on the bar and plays melancholy air guitar) while Young Jeezy raps about setting us free “mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally” over impossibly persistent horns – or is it just synth? – and perhaps this club is the manifestation of fame – confusing, making you follow urges that might not end in the best outcomes – unless you’re URsher or one of the other male stars featured, who MAYBE could make Love in a Club consequence-lessly, but more likely it could end up in the tabloids or on the Gawker mini-article feed:
“Usher fined $750,500 for ‘lewd behavior’ after love-making incident in Las Vegas club.” “Mel Gibson recorded ranting at parking lot attendant about taxes in Aramaic.” “Kim Kardashian’s Disasterous Vanity Fair Photo Shoot.” “VIDEO: LeBron James humiliated in melodic freestyle by Krayzie Bone of Cleveland’s Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony in Miami Jamba Juice.”
But maybe not, perhaps discretion is assured, part of the “deal-with-the-diamonds/divas” these rappers have seemed to have made.
Nevertheless, nothing prepares us for the end. After chasing Ms. Hilson around the club which alternately fills and empties with fellow aspiring love-makers, Usher, almost out of breath from a dope dance number heads shoulder-first into a door and is suddenly in the ruins of a windblown bluish-gray dystopia – there is no club, no Kerri, no Cristal, no icy strings of diamonds, no swirling yellow lights, no superstars (maybe there never really were any) and all you have left is your head full of a beat that thankfully still bumped through your head like a speeding dune buggy in a nearer-future, more feasible Mad Max scenario.
Contextual Healing 