The Following Text Has Been Copy And Pasted From Its YouTube Page.

July 28, 2005. (Part 1A)
CRITIC Armond White “MUSIC TO MY EYES” Music Video Presentation at Lincoln Center.

Band: Lemon Jelly
Song: “Come Down On Me”
Director: Fred Deakin/Airside

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July 28, 2005. (Part 1B)
CRITIC Armond White “MUSIC TO MY EYES” Music Video Presentation at Lincoln Center.

Singer: Britney Spears
Song: “Toxic”
Director: Joseph Khan

The Following Text Has Been Copy and Pasted From Its YouTube Page.

July 28, 2005 (Part 2A)
CRITIC Armond White “MUSIC TO MY EYES” Music Video Presentation at Lincoln Center.

Singer: Bjork
Song: “Triumph Of A Heart”
Director: Spike Jonze

The Following Text Has Been Cut and Pasted From The YouTube Page.

July 28, 2005. (Part 2B)
CRITIC Armond White “MUSIC TO MY EYES” Music Video Presentation at Lincoln Center.

Due to low camcorder battery energy, I didn’t videotape the entire music video. I focused on the critic’s comments.

Artist: Ludacris
Song: “Get Back”
Director: Spike Jonze

Here are some excerpts from an article on the video:

“Rapper Ludacris as Popeye? That’s the big surprise of the ‘Get Back’ music video in which Ludacris joins the roster of artists to collaborate on a project with acclaimed, avant-pop director Spike Jonze. ‘Get Back’ is another antic satire like those Jonze created for Bjork (‘It’s Oh So Quiet’), The Beastie Boys (‘Sabotage’) and Fat Boy Slim’s ‘Weapons of Choice,’ which revitalized actor Christopher Walken’s career.”

“In ‘Get Back,’ Jonze also revamps Ludacris’ pop image. It is the year’s most startling music video because it applies an unexpected twist to Ludacris’ persona. Always the comical partyer, Ludacris cleverly expounds the crazy thoughts in a kid’s head when he gets high on camaraderie (or some chemical substance). He shows off exuberance for the enjoyment of his boys but also as a code that communicates he understands their desire to feel good. ‘Get Back’ forces viewers to reconsider some of the stereotypes of black male behavior commonly seen in hip-hop music videos but that has previously gone unexamined. So far this year no black actor has made a movie as clever as this. “

“As a team, Jonze and Ludacris provoke audiences to think. By portraying an exaggeratedly macho figure — a live-action cartoon — Ludacris goes beyond the good-time imagery he’s used before. This video demonstrates the degree of play-acting that goes on in rappers’ brash exhibition of gangsta attitude. He is shown with huge, inflated Popeye-style forearms. It is a hyped-up image of strength that relates to the boyish affectation of machismo. Through this playful yet subversive image, hip-hop’s macho ideal gets subverted. Its truth is often covered up by the contemporary fashion of hoodies, Tims, Kangols and prison gear. Jonze and Ludacris’ Popeye image makes fun of selling woof-tickets. The masculine threat that is so popular in hip-hop videos is revealed for what it really is by making it so strange and funny…”

“…Ludacris has the confidence to indulge a macho performance while also showing that he is aware how silly it is. (The Popeye cartoonishness admits that this is indeed a performance.) The opening lavatory scene where a fan annoys him while both stand at their respective urinal, is a startling suggestion of homosexual panic — the fear that psychologists say is a symptom of male insecurity. After this, Luda-Popeye’s swaggering explosion of macho-pride and macho-defensiveness doesn’t simply seem natural — it is exposed as desperate. Even scenes of Luda and his boys (some of them literally juveniles) stalking the streets, swinging their arms like cavemen, busting the cornerstones of buildings and smashing a mailbox (an object Jonze repeats from his Bjork video) further convey the idea that precepts of masculinity and patriarchal communication are being re-examined…”

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July 28, 2005 (Part 3)
CRITIC Armond White “MUSIC TO MY EYES” Music Video Presentation at Lincoln Center.

Due to low camcorder battery energy, I didn’t videotape the entire music video. I focused on the critic’s comments.

Here Armond White talks about THREE music videos.

VIDEO 1
Artist: Chemical Brothers
Song: “Get High”
Director: Joseph Khan

VIDEO 2
Artist: TV on The Radio
Song: “Dreams”
Director: Justin Pandolfino

VIDEO 3
Artist: Lemon Jelly
Song: “A Man Like Me”
Director: Fred Deakin/Airside

The Following Text Has Been Cut and Pasted From The YouTube Page.

The Following Text Has Been Cut And Pasted From The YouTube Page.

July 28, 2005. (Part 5)
CRITIC Armond White “MUSIC TO MY EYES” Music Video Presentation at Lincoln Center.

Due to low camcorder battery energy, I didn’t videotape the entire music video. I focused on Armond White’s comments.

Donda West

Artist: Kanye West
Song: “Jesus Walks”
Director: Michael Haussman

The Following Text Has Been Cut and Pasted From The YouTube Page.

July 28, 2005. (Part 6)

CRITIC Armond White “MUSIC TO MY EYES” Music Video Presentation at Lincoln Center.

Due to low camcorder battery energy, I didn’t videotape the entire music video. I focused on the critic’s comments.

Artist: Bjork
Song: “Who Is It”
Director: Dawn Shadforth
Producer: Annabel Ridley

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July 28, 2005 (Part 7)
CRITIC Armond White “MUSIC TO MY EYES” Music Video Presentation at Lincoln Center.

American Gangster? Gangsta?

Artist: Jay Z
Song: “99 Problems”
Director: Mark Romanek

Due to low camcorder battery energy, I didn’t videotape the entire music video. I focused on Armond White’s comments.

Here are some Armond White quotes on the music video (from his extended essay on the 99 Problems music video)…

“hiphop hit a brick wall at its most influential moment with booty-clapping, money-tossing imagery and lurid, greed-driven lyrical content. but filmmaker mark romanek and jay-z have finally broken through this ethical stagnation with the new music video 99 problems. it’s a strong, strangely beautiful fiction that subverts hiphop cliche and achieves a streetwise definition of new york city that film and music fans have been waiting to see updated since mean streets…”

“…in stevie wonder’s 1973 “living for the city,” a tourist famously (and naively) exclaimed “new york! just like i pictured it!” ironically, romanek proves that in the hiphop era most people’s idea of new york comes from videos (and movies) that dishonestly construct a stereotypical new york of loiterers, thugs and reprobates. black and white film gives it a documentary effect, as if casting an anthropological eye on graffiti, tenements, break-dancers and flashy cars. the stylized look distances ghetto life, but romanek’s structure shifts from borough to borough, playground to jailhouse—a series of interlocking actions from a crazy-quilt travelogue of new york city. 99 problems shows a young black man’s new york as it has never been seen before. jay-z spins a tale of common aimlessness and selfish survival (“ya havin’ girl problems?/i feel bad for you, son/i got 99 problems/and a bitch ain’t one”). his delivery is terse yet eloquent—swingsong, but the world he walks through is ferocious…”

“…no rap fan watching 99 problems would sensibly long to partake in its spectacle. the jail scenes (with frontal nudity of inmates being sprayed for lice) are controversial, restricting the video’s airplay even on cable outlets. this is a tribute to romanek’s visual intensity. he has an iconographic gift to make commonplace things memorable or (as in hurt for johnny cash) numinous. in 99 problems, images and words become a wrecking ball against the familiar edifice of ghetto-fabulous determinism. 99 problems breaks through the nyc truisms of poverty and deprivation that hiphop culture has romanticized. romanek sees the place clearer, tougher and poetically. the cliches will no longer stand.”

“every other music video director will have to face up to this and respond. romanek’s esthetics are informed by a rare social consciousness. (he not only shows what new york folks look like, but how they actually live, mixing harshness and lyricism.) that’s the subversion. this video questions what all the others say is fly, def or cool by showing that hipster perspective to be limited; simply sexy rather than shocking; and laughable instead of tragic. “we’re trying to show the artistry side of hiphop,” jay-z told a reporter. “i just really wanted [mark] to shoot like where i’m from in brooklyn and shoot the hood, but shoot it like art, not just shoot a bunch of dudes or a bunch of cars.”

“…as romanek’s images keep coming at you—pulsing to producer rick rubin’s sullen, reverberating beat—they fall into line as maybe the truest-ever hiphop portrait of new york life. from the marcy projects to a church in brooklyn, it’s a visual parade of around-the-corner confrontations, whimsical children, lost adults, desperate hedonism—the things most hiphop videos treat blithely. no bling-bling allowed. romanek never pauses for condescension, but a couple shots that dolly into a funeral home, then a coffin, are appropriately stunning. only the inevitability of death impedes on the velocity of life…”

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July 28, 2005.   (Part
CRITIC Armond White “MUSIC TO MY EYES” Music Video Presentation at Lincoln Center.

Due to low camcorder battery energy, I didn’t videotape the entire music video. I focused on Armond White’s comments.

Artist: Jay Z
Song: “Dirt Off Your Shoulder”
Director: Dave Meyers