The Daily Swarm

by COURTNEY SMITH

Jay-Z f/ Rihanna and Kanye West “Run This Town”

This is, hands down, the video of the week you must see. I know because approximately 20K people on Twitter tweeted about its premiere. This particular shade of urban outlaw is a new look for Jay-Z, but not so much for video director Anthony Mandler. Mandler started working with Rihanna in 2006 on her video for “Unfaithful” and has done 10 videos with her to date – the majority of her catalog. The aesthetic here is a revisit of his style on several Killers and Rihanna videos, that sort of golden light is his specialty. And other than that this video is a boring fashion shoot.

The Walkmen “On The Water”

Easily the best video ever made for the Walkmen. Fantastic stop motion animation/illustration from director Nir Ben Jacob. And no one is doing Watership Down right now so kudos on bringing allusions to that novel back. My favorite part are the ominous skies and mysterious figure in the window. It’s all very Lost: the early years.

Jamie T “Chaka Demus”

Ah, the return of Mercury Prize nominee Jamie T. This video is reportedly based on the movie “Cannonball Run.” Aside from hilarious stereotyping it features a lot of shots of Jamie running his hand through his hair, a la that annoying kid from NYC Prep.

R. Kelly f/ Keri Hilson “Number One”

Everything from R. Kelly is a must-watch. I won’t lie to you, this isn’t a particularly amazing video but I recommend watching it for when he sings at Keri Hilson, “At my home/Nothing on/Your sex/Got me gone/Went straight/to my dome.” It’s like an R&B haiku.

Atoi “Julio Jackson”

An impressive stop motion video from a Sweedish artist whose name, interestingly enough, is an ASCII to integer C+ programming term that returns zero or something equally confusing. I’m sure in Swedish Atoi actually means something like super cute electro band.