The release of Run The Jewels’ RTJ2 will always remind me of 2014’s tumultuous racial climate in the US — the way Killer Mike and El-P’s lyrics eerily predicted the pattern of white police officers’ repeated deadly violence against unarmed black men, Mike’s thoughtful CNN appearances and Billboard op-ed, the powerful speech Mike gave in St. Louis the night the Darren Wilson ruling came down. And now director AG Rojas has delivered a video that makes that connection even plainer. Rojas’ clip for the Zack De La Rocha collab “Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)” is gripping and simple: a four-minute fistfight between a black man and a white police officer that ends in surprising\ fashion. Watch the video below, where you can also read a statement from Rojas.

When Run The Jewels sent me this track, I knew we had the opportunity to create a film that means something. I felt a sense of responsibility to do just that. We had to exploit the lyrics and aggression and emotion of the track, and translate that into a film that would ignite a valuable and productive conversation about racially motivated violence in this country. It’s provocative, and we all knew this, so we were tasked with making something that expressed the intensity of senseless violence without eclipsing our humanity. For me, it was important to write a story that didn’t paint a simplistic portrait of the characters of the Cop and Kid. They’re not stereotypes. They’re people – complex, real people and, as such, the power had to shift between them at certain points throughout the story. The film begins and it feels like they have been fighting for days, they’re exhausted, not a single punch is thrown, their violence is communicated through clumsy, raw emotion. They’ve already fought their ways past their judgements and learned hatred toward one another. Our goal was to highlight the futility of the violence, not celebrate it.

I am really proud of where we ended up, and I am very thankful that our actors Shea Whigham and Keith Stanfield committed to these characters 100%. They breathed complex life into two people who are usually portrayed in simplistic ways – as archetypes. I can tell you it was an emotional shoot day. It is tough to re-create moments that are so fresh and prevalent in our world today. It affected all of us in deep ways. But I believe that it is important that the way we feel when we see these events in real life has an effect on us. That we resonate with what we know to be right and we don’t numb ourselves out so those feelings can simply be swept away, we must confront them and take some action, however small, or we’ll be stuck in the same cycle of violence and hate.

AG Rojas
Director

RTJ2 was Stereogum’s #1 album of 2014.

[Photo by Dinesh Bangara.]