Music

Kanye West Premieres New Interactive Video For “Black Skinhead”

The first video from Kanye West's Yeezus lives up to expectations

By July 22, 2013
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Screenshot of Kanye West's "Black Skinhead" via KanyeWest.com

Screenshot of Kanye West's "Black Skinhead" via KanyeWest.com

A few weeks ago, an unauthorized version of Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead” hit the internet, much to West’s understandable dismay. West took to Twitter to denounce the leak and to ask reporters to refrain from posting the video until the final version was finished.

This morning, West again took to Twitter, but this time to announce the premiere of the official version of the video. The completed video for “Black Skinhead,” the lead single from his new album, Yeezus, is streaming now at Kanye West’s official site. Much like the leaked video, the official version is done entirely in black and white and built around a digitally-rendered and remarkably muscular version of West. Unlike in the unauthorized version, the new video opens with a controversial image of three KKK members, draped in black, which reflects the song’s title.

(MORE: The 8 Best Things Kanye West Told The New York Times)

The interactive animated video, directed by West and British fashion photographer Nick Knight, replaces the computer’s cursor with a hand with an outstretched middle finger and allows viewers to speed up and slow down the video using the keyboard’s +/- buttons. The video was created as a fully interactive experience meant to appeal to internet users and has a fully integrated system to capture images from the video, which West hopes will lead to a proliferation of images from the video via social networks.

Knight directed West’s “New Slaves” video clips that were projected on the sides of buildings across the country in buzz-generating guerrilla art installations and in the past has collaborated with Lady Gaga on the “Born This Way” video.
West released an official statement about the video, noting its other numerous interactive features. The statement notes that: “Image captures can be synched, posted and shared across all online and mobile social platforms for a unique secondary experience of the traditional music video.”
Read the full statement here:
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