Run the Jewels have shared the music video for the powerful Run the Jewels 2 track "Close Your Eyes." The video is just as evocative, if not so, as the song that takes a strong stance against the current injustices facing society, like police brutality. Director AG Rojas crafts a simple, no-frills video, yet with an incredibly powerful message as two men -- a young black man played by Keith Stanfield (Jimmie Lee Jackson in Selma) and a white police officer played by Shea Whigham (Eli in Boardwalk Empire) and -- grapple with each other all day and all night on a deserted street without one side ever gaining an advantage or winning and eventually come to rest right next to each other. Symbolism is rife throughout the video as the two men represent the larger communities they come from and the seemingly never-ending battle between them. Watch the powerful visuals below from Killer Mike and El-P.
Director Rojas spoke about the opportunity and what message he was trying to convey with his video.
"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," he said.
He continued, "Our goal was to highlight the futility of the violence, not celebrate it."
Killer Mike released a statement on the video via Pigeons and Planes.
"This video represents the futile and exhausting existence of a purgatory-like law enforcement system. There is no neat solution at the end because there is no neat solution in the real world. However, there is an opportunity to dialogue and change the way communities are policed in this country," he said.
