Jay Rock The Ways Video
Jay Rock released the new video for his 90059 single "The Ways" Tuesday, and...it is certainly something. The visual also features an appearance from SiR, the silky Inglewood crooner responsible for the tune's infectious hook (and whom Okayplayer had the express pleasure of interviewing at length earlier this year for our First Look series). The two West Coast stars are joined by a squad of TDE cronies as they carouse through a crowded, neon-lit venue of the type often referred to as "Gentlemen's Clubs" (quite frankly these cats are behaving like anything but).
So there are two conflicting takeways here: 1) SiR and Black Hippy crew doing big thangs! More of this, please. 2) All the tired-out video-hoochie cliches are here: the raining bills, the high-priced bottles, the cheesy grins the female flesh presented as booty-matizing eye-candy and (ugh) some bathroom stall freakiness. This is apparently the music video statement that TDE's creative camp has opted for with 90059--we saw plenty of bouncing asses and glazed-over female gazes in Jay Rock's last video for "Vice City." Honestly it's a bit disappointing; with so much enlightened and creative musicianship and rhyme construction going into these songs, one would hope that the video offerings would be more than just a typical romp through the stereotypical rapper dude id. In fact it prompts the question: in this post-MTV, gender-is-over era, is Jay Rock's audience really here for this? Is it even an effective marketing strategy? On the one hand, much of the body-shaming and judging of women's sexuality that would once have accompanied such displays has gone by the wayside. On the other, you have to squint pretty hard to blur these particular bodies into self-actualized sexual beings displaying themselves the way they choose, feels like an unambiguous throwback to the bad old days of objectification.
Let us know what you feel about it below, but our vote is: two thumbs up on this collaboration, back to the storyboard on the video.
