Give him 34 minutes, and Kanye will give you a headache

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7W0DMAx8FY&feature=player_embedded

That, gentle reader, is the full-length video for Kanye West’s new jam, “Runaway”—34 minutes of astronomical bodies, explosions, savantish pop culture slant rhymes (“too many Urkels on your team / that’s why your wins low”) and fine-ass mythological bitches. Props to everyone’s favorite Meghan Gallagher for the link. I’m not saying that Kanye has entered his Use Your Illusion phase, but the first thing he does in this video is drive a sports car, and the second thing he does is discover a new form of life. You have to watch the whole thing to appreciate it, but in case you don’t have a half hour to watch music videos on Monday morning, I’ve broken it down into its salient points after the jump.

0:00-0:20—Kanye runs to his car while the “Strong men also cry” music from The Big Lebowski plays.

0:25—Are you concerned that your 34-minute music video will be seen as pretentious? Take a page from David Bowie and lighten the mood by opening with a nursery rhyme about how this world is not the real one. Also, please stop abusing Nicki Minaj.

2:30—The comet moves through the forest at exactly the same apparent speed with which it moved across the sky. Someone please borrow Kanye’s rhinestone sextant and explain this to him.

3:00—Kanye found a space turkey.

3:20—What just exploded? It doesn’t matter. You’re safe now, Space Turkey.

3:52—Meanwhile, on Kanye’s gay uncle’s couch…

4:00—Space Turkey watches a disconcerting English/Chechnyan language news broadcast, which tell us that fires are raging but does not tell us where. Don’t worry, everyone—it’s just because a comet struck the earth.

4:33—Kanye explains the “first rule in this world, baby,” which is that you should approach broadcast news with a critical eye. Perhaps a better first rule for the possibly brain-damaged Space Turkey would be “This is a TV; it shows images from far away,” or “That’s an uncontrolled forest fire. You caused that.” But whatever, we can start right in with cynicism.

4:39—Oh god, another explosion! Seriously, don’t worry about it.

5:00—A surprising number of animals coexist in Kanye’s back yard. Space Turkey has to stay out there while he’s at the store.

5:18—Space Turkey tries and fails to love a rabbit.

5:26—Kanye begins to realize that he has brought home a retarded chick.

6:00—Kanye becomes bored with this Kanye song and starts screwing around with his loop station. Space Turkey needs 18 hours of sleep per earth day, but that ain’t happening.

6:01–7:30—Kanye and Space Turkey have a dance party until one of his children escapes with one of his vague symbols.

7:45—Second rule of this world, baby: these are fireworks, the human pair-bonding practice of holding hands, white people, Michael Jackson’s distended head, Klansmen and a completely different song.

9:35—We really need to do something about this forest fire.

9:58—Kanye waits patiently for sex while Space Turkey looks at a teacup for forty minutes.

10:30—Hey, what’s up, guys? I’m Kanye, and this is my other idea for a video.

11:03—Wait a minute, this world seems a strange inversion of—hey, is that Kanye West and a turkey with amazing tits?

12:00—Kanye watches in mute horror as Space Turkey notices another teacup.

12:45—Kanye slowly realizes that, since the comet, he is now the second most attention-seeking person on earth.

13:05–13:35—Six weeks of UCB improv classes, wasted.

13:40—We remembered to get the piano out of here, right?

13:55—We remembered to get the white chicks out of here, right?

15:27—With ballerinas dancing all around him while he plays a white piano to a banquet hall of judgmental black people and his girlfriend of another species who just fell from space on a comet, Kanye proposes a toast for the jerkoffs.

19:21—Yes, Space Turkey thinks to herself, but he is rich.

20:39—Even I am bored.

21:05—Kanye calmly explains to the woman across the table from him that the future of hip hop is formless vocoder solos and ballet.

22:59—Sorry I blacked out, you guys. I didn’t sing, did I?

23:42—Space Turkey is not going to be happy about this roasted Earth Turkey.

23:54—Nope, not happy at all.

24:14—Everyone does what they were too polite to do while Kanye was doing that.

24:22—Kanye can’t believe he let this chick move in with him two hours after he met her.

24:36—My car!

24:50—It’ll be okay, baby. Wanna go sit in the yard?

25:22—Kanye broods, forced to choose between Space Turkey and sheep.

26:00—Space Turkey miraculously develops the power of speech to ask the stupidest fucking question ever.

26:15—Oh, it was rhetorical. Kanye thinks statues were carved by artists, but Space Turkey thinks they are phoenixes turned to stone. This raises serious questions about what both parties think phoenixes are.

26:30–27:00—Seriously, Kanye doesn’t have anyone to stop him from doing stuff like this? In a video full of expressions of alienated loneliness, this realization is perhaps the most poignant.

27:0028:00—Kanye finally gives us what we want: a tasteful scene of him fucking a bird to a Bon Iver song.

28:02—Kanye’s ejaculate (artist’s conception)

28:40—Dear god, please say it was all a dream.

29:09—The woods are okay! Does this mean my car is unexploded?

29:46—The phoenix is reborn in a cloud of fire and foy rig.

29:56—Kanye runs down the same road as before, introducing the terrifyingly Nietzschean possibility of an endless “Runaway” video recursion.

30:21—We should not have spent all the money before the flying sequence.

30:31—Space Turkey realizes her boobs have been showing, like, this whole time.

31:20—Farewell, Space Turkey. If you see Kanye’s capacity for critical self-evaluation, let us know.

31:34–34:32—The credits for this music video are the length of a music video.

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6 Comments

  1. Dan successfully demonstrates he could have written for MST3K.
    I tried to click through to a couple of the images in the video, but this was a much funnier read without having any fucking idea what was going on.

  2. So you searched “who is the woman in runaway?” and arrived here. Persistently, you even read the comments. Well, my horny friend, the name you are looking for is Selita Ebanks. Go. Go now and seek your destiny.

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