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Spyclef Jean

12 Jul 09 | Re: Superbly over-the-top video

I miss the days when Meat Loaf used to make videos so elaborate that you’d wait intently for the captions on The Chart Show to tell you what film the song was from, and then realise that it wasn’t from any film, he’d just really gone to town on the video. One of them was actually directed by Michael Bay.

Today, alas, nobody quite matches Mr Loaf’s ambition, but if anyone comes close, it has to be Wyclef Jean. Look at this video for a fairly minor release of his called Touch Your Button (don’t know how long Youtube links last so see it while you can). It makes no sense. It’s ages before the music even starts. It has Will.I.Am in it out of the Black Eyed Peas. But on the plus side, it stars Wyclef as an action hero who leads a crew of gangster midgets, kung fus up a load of bad guys and teaches a whole club full of hoodlums a nifty new dance.

The track itself doesn’t sound quite as good when it’s not at the start of a fifteen-minute pan-musical triptych that starts in the studio with Will.I.Am, then heads off round the West Indies and Brazil and ends in a Haitian lament, sung in Creole, that would melt your heart. That’s where Touch Your Button is on the album, and that’s a blog entry for another time. But for now you can enjoy the kung fu and gasoline-wielding criminal kingpins. ¡Olé!

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