No Church In The Wild- Jay Z & Kanye West (Explicit)

No Church in the Wild is a song by Jay Z And Kanye West featuring Frank Ocean, which is promoted by a narrative music video that doesn’t feature any of the artists. Instead the video is a riot between police and protestors from a neutral perspective, meaning it doesn’t favour either. However even though the song doesn’t link with the lyrics of the song. The line "Will he make it out alive" is sung by Frank Ocean as protestors are beaten and pepper sprayed; possibly connoting the brutality of the police.

The music video does not start straight away with the song, instead the sound of a lighter and the lit flame are heard, and this can connote the start of the violent protest by using fire. Fire is known as dangerous and hazardous a sign of what is to come. The person holding the flame does not have any gloves or long sleeve, emphasising how they are tough human being who are ready for battle.

The whole video has a dark setting (mainly at night) with only flairs and flames providing strong primary colours such as red, green and the orange/red/yellow of the flames created by protestors. The use of fire and smoke filling the screen presents the idea of anarchy, as an ordered society is burning. And possibly a more wild society is coming. A number of factors ca contribute to a wild society, for example the monkey noises heard as men police and protestors are fighting like wild animals for example a lion and a gazelle. Furthermore a mammoth is shown, a strong animal possibly connoting the wild society of anarchy is taking over and hard to move through being so big and strong.

The cuts between shots are done in time with the music (mostly), switching between different scenes of the carnage going on throughout the riot. This is done to keep the same pace with the music. The song is not a fast beat, meaning you cannot have fast takes as it will not go together well, instead the music video uses long take that cut in time with the song, plus scenes of slow motion further emphasising the slow nature of the song.

The music video is very useful in research. I have known the song for a very long time and never imagined this sort of music video going with this song. However the violent nature of the video and the darkness of the song work very well in producing a dark, violent and realistic protest that news channels do not show, especially in the time of the Arab Spring which has caused many revolutions in many countries to stop "Ruthless" dictators and governments.

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