With everyone going with the natural flow of an instant love for Beyoncé and Jay-Z dropping a surprise album called Everything Is Love as a sort of “conclusion” to what is now being called an album “trilogy,” at the focal point of it all is the video for “Apeshit.” Not just because Bey and Jay are “blissfully” wedded once more, but because it takes place in the venue that everyone is most hard for in Paris: the Louvre.
Being that the duo has visited the museum a total of four times (since to visit it more than that would be a real nuisance to the public being that it has to be entirely shut down for each “session”), it’s only natural that the idea for a video started to germinate some time ago–maybe around the moment Beyoncé took a selfie of just her fingers with the Mona Lisa (her style couldn’t be cramped at that point) in 2014. That people cater to this blind exaltation of the duo was, in fact, at its best exemplified with a Vanity Fair article at the time remarking, “It should be noted that, normally, humans are not allowed to get this close to the painting (Beyoncé and Jay Z are obviously not of humankind, though, and, as such, are exempt from such rules).” No, darling, they are of humankind and so much of the problem with humanity right now is this absurd deification of celebrity.
Even a museum as free to do whatever the fuck it wants can’t help but bow down to the whims and wants of rap’s strongest power couple (maybe rap’s only power couple because we are not counting Cardi B and Offset). That’s why a spokesperson for the Louvre commented on the video shoot, “The deadlines were very tight but the Louvre was quickly convinced because the synopsis showed a real attachment to the museum and its beloved artworks.” Eh, one really doesn’t get that impression as Beyoncé writhes about like a hoochy in front of each piece to further her greatest cause: herself and her marriage to now bitchboy Jay-Z. That she screams “Give me that Vitamin D!” while gyrating in front of “The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine” also speaks to her narcissism when it comes to the manner in which she “subtly” compares the power of her own relationship to that of this “great” emperor’s.
The allusions to being godlike in power also come in the form of Yoncé mucking about in front of the Royal Sphinx with the name of the Pharaoh Achoris. Clearly, she would like to believe Jay-Z is her pharaoh (especially with the lyric, “I won’t let anyone shoot the nose off my pharaoh” in “Black Effect”), despite the fact that he didn’t seem to see her as his Hatshepsut when he was entering someone else. And even though everyone is creaming themselves about how this is a celebration of blackness and reclaiming institutions of the art world that have always been reserved for whitey, can’t one just keep that shit in New York, where celebrity asshole licking is more on blast than in L.A.? Solange did her reclaiming thing at the Guggenheim, why couldn’t “The Carters” do it at MoMA, a place Jay-Z already name-checked in “That’s My Bitch” off of 2011’s Watch the Throne (also, foretellingly featuring the track “Niggas in Paris”).
Less than being about celebrating blackness or reclaiming spaces, it just feels like the video for “Apeshit” is yet another way for Beyoncé and Jay-Z to assert themselves as the “only” black power while also ripping off other black artists in the process (e.g. Deana Lawson).
While Beyoncé might oh so originally insist, “Get off my dick,” in the song, maybe the problem is that people aren’t on it enough in terms of checking a power that is becoming slightly dangerous. No one will question what Beyoncé and Jay-Z present to the world, merely ready to position their tongues as willingly as the Louvre did on their Instagram, with the gushing caption, “Beyoncé and Jay-Z show their love for the Louvre, a place of timeless inspiration. A wonderful collaboration and a great souvenir for the Louvre.” What’s next, they, too (in addition to Kanye), run for president as one person? Maybe even president of France since any country would probably just give them honorary citizenship for the fuck of it.
