We don’t need to be accepted into any hallowed halls of privilege to continue being brilliant, even if we’re simply doing so to disrupt. There are museums, galleries, performance venues, and more that I frequent in my own city that open their doors to and prioritize the work of Black artists every day. Or Kehinde Wiley, who frequently places his Black subjects-dressed in everyday clothes like basketball shorts, hoodies, and Timberland boots-in settings previously reserved for white aristocrats and monarchs. Or amongst work by contemporary Black artists like Kerry James Marshall, Mickalene Thomas, Zanele Muholi, and Vanessa German-work curated by Black curators, who are woefully underrepresented. I also wonder what a video treatment like this one would’ve looked like in The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, or the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Although there is no white gaze in “Apeshit”-not even the white figures in the art have prominence over the unapologetic Blackness-it feels better to watch it hoping The Carters are attempting to make a statement on these ongoing spoils of colonialism. The current director of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, has yet to comment publicly. Macron has been quoted as saying “African heritage can’t just be in European private collections and museums,” a stance that directly opposes that of the French Ministry of Culture. In March, France's president Emmanuel Macron met with President Patrice Talon of Benin to discuss the repatriation of art to African nations. This is frequently compounded for people from the African diaspora, who have to contend with the fact that many European and North American museums display art that was directly plundered from African countries or purchased from collectors who obtained it illegally, or continually hire white curators to handle such collections. Many people don’t consider museums to be “for them”-the level of opulence and privilege isn’t relatable. I wanted a longer moment of gravity with this work amongst the song’s frequent boasts of “Can’t believe we made it.” Because I don’t actually think The Carters are implying that being rich and famous enough to claim The Louvre as their own is “what thankful for.” I don’t want that to be the implication. I’d have preferred her uncentered, in the background: a rejection of status on those particular terms, in conjunction with a song that says fuck the NFL, fuck the Grammys, and fuck the fame. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” It made me wish Bey and Jay had kept their backs turned to her, instead of facing her at the end of the video.

The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. Highly esteemed, ostentatiously protected (in the Louvre, it sits behind bulletproof glass), it brings to mind a snippet of Malcolm X's speech at the funeral of Ronald Stokes, which Beyoncé included in Lemonade’s visual album: “The most disrespected woman in America is the Black woman. Besides Bey and Jay famously snapping a selfie in 2014 with the Mona Lisa, and the couple of times Jay has referenced it directly (“sleeping every night next to Mona Lisa / The modern day version with better features” in “Picasso Baby,” “If Picasso was alive he woulda made her / That’s right, n-a, Mona Lisa can’t fade her,” in “That’s My Bitch”), it is one of the most valuable, and certainly the most famous pieces of art in the world. Cut to the immaculate ceiling of the Galerie d'Apollon, depicting Apollo's battle with Python: a contemporary Black angel to mirror the angelic figures framing the battle, and potentially to juxtapose the 'he was no angel' rhetoric used to dehumanize Mike Brown and deny Black boys’ and girls’ innocence. 'Apeshit' opens with the camera panning over a shirtless, dreadlocked Black man in sneakers and ripped jeans, white angel wings draped across his back. It's Bey, Jay, and their gorgeous cast that command attention and get affectionately treated as the invaluable art within a building that houses the largest collection of art in the world, but not nearly enough by Black artists.

There's an almost-disregard for the art, or a bored, perfunctory acknowledgment of it at best, in favor of these audacious and unrelenting displays of Black love and brilliance.

Jay z beyonce apeshit video