Champagne flows as piles of cash go up in smoke.
The end of capitalism comes not with a bang, but with a cash-burning bonfire. Run the Jewels make a hard-to-miss statement about greed in the eye-popping video for the RTJ4 single “Ooh LA LA.” The clip, directed by Brian & Vanessa Beletic in March before most of the nation went on COVID-19 lockdown, features a brief cameo from reclusive Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de La Rocha, as well as MC Greg Nice.
The premise is pretty simple, summed up in the prelude to the clip: “one day the long fought battle between humanity and the forces of greed and division will end, and on that day, finally free, we will throw a motherf—ing party.” The scene then turns to a street party in which giant mounds of dollar bills and credit cards are piled up in the street and set on fire as RTJ MCs El-P and Killer Mike rap about Rome burning.
“Help me understand, I’m probably more of a Joker/ When we usher in chaos, just know that we did it smilin’/ Hannibal’s on the island, inmates run the asylum,” Killer Mike rhymes on the booming track that also features DJ Premier. The duo released a statement about the shoot for the clip, in which they described the pre-coronavirus setting.
“We shot this video only a few weeks before the pandemic hit with no clue as to what the future held,” they wrote. “The fact that we got the chance to do it is damn near miraculous in hindsight. In conceptualizing the video with our friends Brian and Vanessa Beletic we imagined the world on the day that the age old struggle of class was finally over. A day that humanity, empathy and community were victorious over the forces that would separate us based on arbitrary systems created by man. This video is a fantasy of waking up on a day that there is no monetary system, no dividing line, no false construct to tell our fellow man that they are less or more than anyone else. Not that people are without but that the whole meaning of money has vanished. That we have somehow solved our self created caste system and can now start fresh with love, hope and celebration. its a dream of humanity’s V-DAY… and the party we know would pop off.”
Watch the “Ooh LA LA” video below.