My Apologies Kanye, The Official “Black Skin Head” Video Really Is Dope Posted by Nathan S. on 07/22/13 | Filed under Top Stories, Videos, Kanye West

When Kanye West flipped out over the leak of "Black Skinheads" I'll be honest; I was pretty sure he was over-reacting. Of course having your shit leaked would be frustrating, but I assumed he was just being a perfectionist. How much better could the final product really be?

Well, it looks like I owe Mr. West an apology. The official version really is something different. By only posting it on his site, he build some cool code that lets people speed up and slow down the video (as Lucas pointed out, there's a speed where he weirdly sounds exactly like Killer Mike), share it on Instagram, and some other cool shit.

In a lot of ways, I feel the same way about this album that I felt about "Yeezus". I genuinely respect Kanye for doing something new and pushing the culture forwards. I hope this helps artists rethink what they can do with their videos; they won't have the budget to do something exactly the same, but that doesn't mean you can't build in more interactive elements. Remember what Jean Grae did for "Kill Screen"?

But, while I am really impressed by the new video, and it'll be fun to fuck around with for a day or so, I can't see myself coming back to it in a couple weeks, or a couple months. It's more of a symbolic, artistic gesture than a work of art in and of itself, which in a lot of ways seems to be Kanye's mission right now. And yes, I recognize that shit sounds like I'm stoned and having shallow "deep" thoughts, but I'm stone cold sober (at the moment).

On a closing note, Kanye's right. Just ripping and posting the video would completely defeat the purpose - watching this without the interactive element would be like drinking non-alcoholic beer. So you're just going to have to HEAD OVER TO KANYEWEST.COM for the full experience.

p.s. - I wonder how Vevo/the label feels about this. It's not like they were making a ton of money off YouTube videos, but Kanye really did just take money out of their pockets, and his, by circumnavigating the usual system and putting a non-embeddable video on his own site. What was that he said in the (not at all) greatest verse of all-time? "Fuck you and your corporation"?

p.p.s. - I guarantee you porn companies are watching this and thinking, "Hmmmm......."