Kanye West is a highly successful rap artist. At potentially the height of his career, he created a song called “Power”, with a fantastic video that almost acts like a painting. Kanye West uses the lyrics and the accompanying video to the song “Power” in order to show the inner conflict between his love of power, and the insecurities having this power may bring.
The video starts out with showing Kanye, with extremely confident looking eyes, at the end of a long hallway made up of pillars. It zooms out revealing a thick huge chain necklace with a large Egyptian eagle amulet. The camera zooms out even further to reveal a large multitude of mythical feminine figures: horned women wielding scepters, a cherub, two gravity defying women carrying pots of water, two women making out, and other figures. The zoomed out picture also reveals a hovering sword over Kanye’s head. Finally the video flashes between individual scenes of the figures only to show a battle between a man and a woman with Kanye in the middle of them. The majority of the imagery described establishes the fact that Kanye is very successful at being a music artist. Kanye being in the center of the whole scene already establishes importance in him. This is further supported by the fact he’s wearing a giant Egyptian falcon head which turns out to really be Horus: one of the most important Egyptian deities. Horus fulfills many roles in the Egyptian myths such as their sky god, god of war, god of hunting, etc. One of the mythical figures in the foreground of the image is a four winged angel. Turns out there are a specific type of angel that has four wings called a “Cherub” whose main duty is to basically worship and praise god. Most of the people in the video are women which expresses Kanye’s sexual prowess. All these images establish that Kanye has an almost god-like power. However looming above Kanye is a floating sword which appears to reference The Sword of Damocles. In The Sword of Damocles Dionysus temporarily gives the throne to Damocles; however Dionysus hangs a large sword over Damocles head by a single hair. This is supposed to demonstrate the sense of fear and insecurity one has when gives a lot of power. All of this reveals the vast amount of power Kanye has, but also the fear this power has given him as symbolized by the sword above his head. The scene ends with all of the mythical beings disappearing and a man and a woman about to battle each other in front of Kanye. All of this shows the inner turmoil within Kanye as he fights between his love of power and his insecurities.
The lyrics support and expand what the video has said. The first few lines which says “I’m in the 21st century doin’ something mean to it, Do it better than anybody ya ever seen do it” is him establishing his dominance in the music industry. The song then proceeds to go into the main chorus which says that “No one man should have all that power. The clock’s tickin’ I just count the hours. Stop trippin’, I’m trippin’ off the power. 21st Century Schizoid man” This shows that while he does enjoy having all this power, he’s well aware that no one should have too much power. Later in the lyrics he directly admits to his egotism when he said “Now I embody every characteristic of the egotist”, but then shortly after he starts lamenting the loss of his “childlike creativity, purity, and honesty”. Kanye says “Reality is catchin’ up with me. Takin’ my inner child, I’m fightin’ for it, custody, with these responsibilities that they entrusted me”. He’s basically saying that having a lot of power can stricken your inner creativity and innocence which is one of the causes of the insecurities he’s dealing with. After repeating the chorus again he then once again shows off his power and sexual dominance, but suddenly the song takes a drastic shift in tone when Kanye said “Now this’ll be a beautiful death, I’m jumpin’ out the window, I’m letting everything go, I’m letting everything go”. He repeats the message of his suicide another time then finally closes his song with “You got the power to let power go.” The counting down in the main choruses is probably counting down the final hours of his life until he committed suicide. This suicide reflects that the power has overwhelmed him, and he’s now lost all of his power. That’s also what he probably meant about us having the power to let power go. One of the nuances about this song is the flipping between enjoying and showing off the power and his revealing of his inner insecurities. This is showing an inner conflict between the fact that he wants to have all that power but he wishes to have true happiness. This inner conflict is probably what the final scene in the video where a man and a woman seem to attack each other in front of Kanye.
Kanye West combines the video and the lyrics in order to express his insecurities caused from the huge amount fame, fortune and power he has achieved from his music career. Kanye is divided between the feelings of his insecurity and the feeling of being powerful. He eventually however becomes overwhelmed and loses to his insecurities when he “committed suicide” at the end of his song. This all goes to show that you need to learn to control power before it controls you.
No comments:
Post a Comment