S. Samuel
After rap mogul Jay Z's must-watch "Holy Grail" music video premiered online this week, director Anthony Mandler has stepped forward to provide some context on how it came together.
According to Mandler, Young Hov gave him full control of turning the Magna Carta Holy Grail standout single into his vision.
“Jay’s committed to turning the rules upside down. He’s willing to push the boundaries, flip the concepts, and allowed me the ability to be really disrespectful to the track, to re-cut it and change the order,” Mandler told MTV News. “When we started the video, the idea wasn’t to re-arrange the track; that came along the process of discovery, during the edit, when we had this idea of ‘How do we turn the medium again?” (MTV)
Anthony also explained their decision to opt out of starting the video with guest feature Justin Timberlake‘s opening lyrics.
“Yes, I could craft a nine-minute, cinematic video, or Jay and I could step back, put some footage on the chopping block, put a chorus on the chopping block, surprise people and make this an experience,” he continued. “It’s a revision of the song … I loved the long Justin intro, but it was like ‘Let’s fool ’em a little bit, give ’em an abstract video, then jump right in.’ It was a way to f– with people’s heads, in a time when people don’t do that anymore.” (MTV)
Despite already hitting platinum status and winning over his peers, Jigga decided to keep the promo going by releasing the music video on Thursday (August 29).
After wrapping their “Legends of the Summer” tour earlier this month, Jay Z and Justin Timberlake go in search of the “Holy Grail” in their dark new video. Director Anthony Mandler chops up the song to tell a cautionary tale of what happens when it all falls down. While they may appear to have everything, we see that their life is not as glamorous as it seems. Behind the bright lights and lavish lifestyle hides the dark side of fame. The Timbaland-produced single, which is currently No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, is the second song off Magna Carta… Holy Grail to get a visual release following “Picasso Baby.” (Rap-Up)
The rap mogul also made history with “Holy Grail” by making it the first-ever music video premiered on Facebook.
Jay Z is using social media to his advantage. The music mogul has chosen Facebook as the place to premiere the new video for Holy Grail. After all, his page does boast more than 17 million “likes,” or fans, so it only seems natural to start there. It will remain exclusively on Facebook for 24 hours. The song, which features Justin Timberlake, is off of his album Magna Carta Holy Grail. (USA Today)
Check out the “Holy Grail” music video:
