An album called Yeezus comes out today, adding another chapter to the ongoing saga of Mr. Kanye West. You might remember that he's been projecting his face onto buildings lately in promotion of this album, but we have not seen a regular old YouTube music video coming down the pipes.
But like his musical output, Kanye West has a long and extremely interesting music video output as well. So today, we're watching one that doesn't even have him in it - "Can't Tell Me Nothing (Alternate Version)".
The video features pre-The Hangover Zach Galifianakis and folk singer/songwriter Will Oldham on Galifianakis' farm in North Carolina. Galifianakis performs Kanye's vocals, and Oldham plays a sort of silent sidekick role. It was filmed and edited by Michael Blieden (who also directed the Fiona Apple song that features Galifianakis).
It's important to put a few things in context here. At this point in his career, Mr. West had done things like make three videos for one song, one of which contained him in front of a wall of fire. He had already made a video with Hype Williams for this song and it aired on TV. Putting out an alternate video for this song without him in it, and featuring a relatively underground comedian and folk singer walking around in silk pajamas humping farm equipment was probably not on people's shortlists of what they thought Kanye was going to release next, but there you go.
The thing that makes this version of "Can't Tell Me Nothing" special is that it manages to not go too far into the "white guys rapping is funny" area and features some genuinely well-done performances by Galifianakis. They could have gone much farther into several random directions, but they kept it much lower key than it could have been. Michael Blieden also manages to capture some really beautiful scenes of North Carolina as well, not to mention a group of girls dancing on plywood out in the forest that adds some unique visuals.
The story goes that Kanye West saw Galifianakis' standup in LA and asked him to do the video, and whether or not it was meant to be a purely comical throwaway or not, it ends up being a video with a little more depth.
