Originally released as a Tidal exclusive, JAY-Z’s striking visual for “The Story Of O.J.” has now been released to the masses. Check it out below and, if you’ll excuse me, I’m pressing play on 4:44 for like the 50th time.
“‘The Story of OJ’ is really a song about we as a culture, having a plan, how we’re gonna push this forward,” JAY-Z says of the song during his track-by-track break down of the album. “We all make money, and then we all lose money, as artists especially. But how, when you have some type of success, to transform that into something bigger.”
Co-directed by Hov and Mark Romanek (“99 Problems”), the two craft up an animated clip revolving around the character of Jaybo (a flip on “Sambo” from the racist chidren’s book The Story of Little Black Sambo from the 20th century) as he navigates through a landscape of cotton fields, slave ships, burning crosses, and lynchings.