This video, created by graphic artist Evan Roth (and open sourced here), is pretty neat and all, but more importantly, it has encouraged us to listen to the song several more times and actually engage with how good it is. When we talked to Kanye for our cover story, we asked him about his production on Jay's new album, wondered whether he was going to try to get Hov to go weird. He answered:
I think certain of Jay’s records were perfect for his fans and perfect for big stadiums, and it’s just finding those. It's like, “What You Know" comes once in a blue moon, but I just try to set the studio to blue moon so I get ten of those.
Is "Brooklyn Go Hard" as good as "What You Know"? Our hearts say no, but we put it on last night and realized how serious it really is, especially Jay's Weezy-ish squeaky island cadence in the opening lines and the general sense that he may not ask Kanye to give him 808's-like beats but that their collaboration might inspire Jay to do things he has not done in a while, like sound excited. Or not, maybe he'll just poop out a brick, but at least he got us speculating again.
Roth's video was created for (RED)'s new (RED)Wire site, a new exclusive music subscription service in which half of all $5 monthly membership fees go directly to The Global Fund to help buy and administer medicine to people in Africa living with HIV. Some other artists involved include Coldplay, The Killers, Cat Power and, of course U2.
