With just 52 hours left in 2017, Jay-Z and Beyoncé dropped the eagerly-anticipated full video for "Family Feud" after posting a teaser yesterday. And, wow, the video is the absolute most in absolute best way.
The video is currently watchable exclusively on Tidal, but you can watch it now by beginning a free trial with the service.
Let's begin with the biggest surprise: Ava DuVernay directed the video. Yes, that DuVernay, who directed Selma and the upcoming film adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time. For "Family Feud," she took us on a futuristic odyssey beginning in the year 2444 and ending in the very near 2018.
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As the video opens, we are in a church, and the priest is walking up stairs while yelling at someone off-camera. He enters a bedroom, revealing a woman who looks a lot like Leeloo from The Fifth Element. Surprise! There's another man (Trevante Rhoades) in bed with the woman, and a scuffle ensues, leaving two bodies in its wake.
We then see Jessica Chastain, sporting a very sculptural look, consulting with two presidents: a man and woman. It turns out that the murder we just saw take place are members of the male president's family.
The years flash backwards, as the president narrates. "My family fought for the law," he says, and we see images of a war breaking out in the past, styled in DuVernay's signature gritty sci-fi aesthetics. In 2096, groups are fighting, and a small child (Quevenzhené Wallis) rides a horse with her family's flag held aloft.
"One my ancestors was one of America's Founding Mothers," narrates the president, and we flash back to the year 2050, "a time when we thought making America great meant making us afraid of each other." A group of women, including Janet Mock, Rashida Jones, Mindy Kaling, Constance Wu, and more, are seated around a table. They are debating revisions to the United States Constitution, and are having a heated conversation about the second amendment. "America is a family," says This Is Us star Susan Kelechi Watson, one of the Founding Mothers, "and it's like my father said, nobody wins when the family feuds."
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We are then brought to the present day. Watson's character is revealed to be grown Blue Ivy, who sits in a church pew in 2018. The music video begins, and Jay-Z and Beyoncé sing "Family Feud."
The full video is over seven minutes long, but if we need to honest, we could watch a full sci-fi miniseries about this. A president in the year 2444 whose family fought for freedom throughout the 2000s? A group of Founding Mothers who fiercely debate the Constitution, bringing it up to relevancy in the the present-day? And what happened to cause that war in the 2100s? DuVernay has created something more than just a music video — and we hope to see this story explored.
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