Top Ten Tuesday: Jay Z featuring Justin Timberlake "Holy Grail"

The second most popular post on this blog is the TTT I did for JT's "Suit and Tie" [EDIT: Since I wrote this post, it has become THE most popular post] which featured Jay Z and now the video for "Holy Grail", the lead-off track from Jay's Magna Carta Holy Grail album, and one of my favorite songs of the year. I love the juxtaposition of their voices and the dynamic, epic feel of the song.

The video is visually striking. Lots of flash and shine interspersed with scenes of Jay sitting in a room with bullet-riddled walls and dusty furniture. Very nice contrast. It's a great video to watch.

They've done some remixing of the song, which I'm not sure I care for. One of the things I love about the song is that JT gets at least 90 seconds of singing in before Jay utters a word and I think that's a pretty ballsy way to start a record. But apparently, they thought it was too ballsy a move for the video.

And then they slow the hook way way down. And just, I don't know. It changes it.

This won't be posting for 12 days from when I'm writing it and I'm sure that lots of people will have comments and discussions about it in the interim. But, from the perspective of 35 minutes after it was posted to Facebook, I'd say that I like the look of the video and I know that they needed to adjust the song to suit that look. I just don't think I'll come back to this video when I want to listen to the song. Which is maybe ok, you know? The song and the video can be two separate entities.