After the release of his latest album, 4:44, Jay-Z has released a music video for songs from the album every Friday since then. The latest is the video for the track “Moonlight” and he chose to do an all-black cast remake of the classic and very popular 90s sitcom, “F.R.I.E.N.D.S”.
The video wasn’t just for fun as it had some loaded messages to pass across.
First of all, it featured a star-studded celebrity cast of Comedian Jerrod Carmichael (“The Carmichael Show”) as Ross and Issa Rae of HBO’s “Insecure” as Rachel. Lil Rel Howery (“Get Out”) plays Joey with Lakeith Stanfield (“Atlanta”) as Chandler. Tessa Thompson (“Creed”) as Monica while Tiffany Haddish (“Girls Trip”) plays Phoebe.
Everything, from the clothes to the set and the shots was almost exactly like the original “F.R.I.E.N.D.S” . It features comedian Hannibal Buress appearing as himself in an off stage chat with Carmichael. He criticizes the show as “garbage”, “episodes of ‘Seinfeld’ but with black people.” Among other things, this seems to speak to a prevailing idea of white people and what they approve as the standard.
The show had already been labelled as white version of an original all-black sit-com “Living Single” which had come out a few years before, “F.R.I.E.N.D.S” and did have some success. Only that, “F.R.I.E.N.D.S” was so much more successful. The fact that it got a bigger promotional push than it’s forerunner cannot be overlooked.
In the video, the cast returns on set to continue acting but Carmichael, who plays Ross, is really no longer in it. Later on, we hear lyrics of Jay-Z’s song playing, “We stuck in La La Land/Even when we win, we gon’ lose.” This is a reference to the accident at the Oscars, when the movie “La La Land” was named the winner of best picture instead of “Moonlight” which was the actual winner. The mix-up, for many, took something away from the actual winner’s shine which is a movie about a black boy’s coming of age. The allusion to this incident doesn’t just stop at the lyrics of the song; it actually start’s from the title, “Moonlight”
Want to what more is on the “Moonlight” video? Watch it on Tidal or you can wait until it’s released everywhere else this week.
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