Kanye West's Portrait of Power

Rapper Kanye West has been called a lot of things, but when it comes to creativity he’s second to none.  In 2010 Kanye released the song entitled “Power ” from his fifth Album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Later that summer West released the video to go along with the song, and it caused quite a stir in the pop culture world.  The video itself was a little under two minutes of the song, but what made it so different was that it was actually a “live portrait” or in Kanye’s words a “moving painting.”  
As the song begins, the camera slowly pans out in one continuous shot to show Kanye standing at the end of a hallway of dark columns, surrounded by women half-dressed in sashes. Some of the women are kneeling before him as if to worship him, some have long horns like an ibex, and some are upside down pouring water that flows upwards. There are two horned female figures on either side of Kanye bearing a staff each, loosely resembling interpretations of the Egyptian goddesses Isis and Hathor.  There is a sword hanging over Kanye’s head which is most likely the Sword of Domocles of Greek mythology.  It represents an allusion to imminent and ever-present peril faced by those in positions of POWER.  We then see that the video seems to be about the death of Kanye because the image of two men with swords come closing in on either side of him, and just before they make contact the video goes black.  The way the image was created makes it look almost like old Roman Catholic religious paintings, and the colors are very dark but regal.  The presence of aspects from the Greek and Egyptian cultures and West in the epicenter of it all gives the viewer a sense that Kanye West thinks of himself as a man with enough power to be greater than the gods of the ancient cultures. Horus, the Egyptian god of the skies, vengeance, protection, and war was considered in many ancient Egyptian civilizations as the patron god.  This means that out of all the other gods, Horus was the entrusted protector of all these various civilizations, and in this portrait Kanye wears him in a gold chain around his neck.  With the two men charging their swords at West’s head in the video, Kanye means to say that because he is so powerful he has people with ill intentions towards him.  Kanye knows that the sword is over his head, meaning he knows people are trying to bring him down because like the song says, “No one man should have all that power.”