"Stronger"

I am posting this here for a few reasons:

Mostly because it's my blog and I can do whatever the hell I want with it and none of you can do anything about it.

Also because I have been a big fan of Kanye West since his first album--I think he is one of very few unique voices in the hip-hop world--and his newest album is set to come out in August. Here's the video that just came out from the first single released off the new album. It's called "Stronger," and it samples, coincidentally, my favorite Daft Punk song "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" (it's not as dirty as it sounds). Not being in the states, this was my first time hearing the song as well, and I am very very pleased.

The last reason is probably most relevant to the content of this blog. You'll notice a lot of Japanese writing throughout the video, and that there are a bunch of weird scenes which seem to make no sense. For some reason (that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the lyrics at all, but I suppose fits with the rhythm and feel of the track), they decided to remake scenes from the Japanese animated film Akira (Certainly the most famous anime movie in the USA, one of the most famous in Japan as well) as live-action sequences. I like the movie Akira for various reasons, but don't absolutely love it. The comic, however, that the movie is based off of, is one of my favorite books in the whole world. It's a tremendous epic, actually, spanned across 6 phone-book sized volumes, and the movie (which was made by the same man who made the comic, Katsuhiro Otomo) only covers about half of what goes on in the comic. Anyways, I could talk forever about Akira and how much I love it, but the real point is to show how far Japan has penetrated into American pop culture. There's no indication in the video that the scenes are taken from Akira at all, you're just supposed to know. And I bet a ton of people will. Awesome. This country is the height of 'cool.'