Today's Pick

Jay-Z and Kanye West performing together again for their mind-blowing show in a newly-released video for their hit “Niggas In Paris,” the third track from their collaboration album "Watch The Throne," in which everything the superstar duo rap about is what they actually go through. Followed the release of "Otis" last year, this part live clip, part kaleidoscopic freakout, the "Paris" video more than matches the song's massive impact.
West steals the show on the Hit-Boy produced club anthem, which incorporates staccato orchestration, fizzing industrial noise, a sampling of dialogue from the Will Ferrell/Jon Heder ice-skating comedy film "Blades of Glory." The dynamic rap duo breathed new life into their inescapable hit, and their lyrics frame their rags to riches story on the song. In an interview, West revealed that the song was inspired by his travels in Paris. Both rappers come in hard over a slow, menacing beat and icy synthesizer notes.
The dark, apocalyptic clip, directed by West himself, is taken from a run of live shows at Los Angeles' Staples Center with shots of the pair performing mixed with crowd footage, giving fans who couldn't score tickets to the sold-out 'Watch the Throne Tour' the chance to experience what it was like - if they had been on psychedelic drugs at the time. Appropriately, the video opens with a warning that its special effects could lead to epileptic seizures. The two rap icons merge and are pulled apart in a kaleidoscope of quick cuts.
Given the size and scope of both the song and the artists performing it, the "Paris" video, spliced with some dynamic imagery and even a slightly reworked beat, is also largely compromised and loaded with lasers, prowling panthers, pop-up-book cityscapes and the aforementioned models. Shoot, even producer Hit-Boy makes a one-second cameo. It's a head-spinning, pulse-quickening mixture of imagery and movement, of sight and sound - an experience unlike any other live clip. If you caught the Throne tour, the "Paris" video is sure to inspire heady flashbacks.