Close Your Eyes And Count To F--k

Album: Run The Jewels 2 (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • The song features a rap from Rage Against The Machine's Zack de la Rocha. Run The Jewels' EL-P told NME: "I bumped into Zack on the way to the studio while getting a juice. Two days later he was in the studio with us recording. It was one take. No bulls--t."
  • The song's music video was directed by AG Rojas, whose resumé also includes clips for Chase & Status' "Hitz," Emeli Sandé's "Daddy" and Jack White's "Sixteen Saltines."

    The visual's topic is police brutality and the futility of the law enforcement system as we see a fight between a black man and a white policeman. AG Rojas said: "When Run The Jewels sent me this track, I knew we had the opportunity to create a film that means something. I felt a sense of responsibility to do just that. 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 continued.

    "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," Rojas added. "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."

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