Run The Jewels Share Striking Music Video For “Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck)”

March 31st, 2015

Mark Garza

Killer Mike and El-P’s Run The Jewels project finds lyrical focus in racial politics regularly. Under the helm of director A.G. Rojas, the duo have shared a music video for “Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck),” featuring former Rage Against the Machine member Zack de la Rocha, that revisits subjects commonly found discussed in their verses.

The video shows a white police officer (Boardwalk Empire‘s Shea Whigham) constantly fighting with a black man (Short Term 12‘s Keith Stanfield). Shot in black and white, the video highlights the ongoing racial tensions of our time. Rojas said of the 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. 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 way past their judgments and learned hatred toward one another. Our goal was to highlight the futility of the violence, not celebrate it.

Check out the video below.