Jay-Z feat Alicia Keys - Empire State Of Mind

“Empire State of Mind” is destined to be played in promos for Knicks games. “Let’s hear it for New York!” Alicia sings in the cheesy hook, giving Jay a breather from name dropping every tourist spot in the verses. Why would he title this flaccid song in such a way as to draw comparisons to Nas’ “N.Y. State of Mind”? Is he trying to give us yet another reason to dig up a copy of Illmatic?

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Jay-Z, Rihanna & Kanye West - Run This Town

'Run This Town' is a 2009 song performed by American hip hop musician Jay-Z. The song features Barbadian R&B singer Rihanna and rap artist Kanye West, who also produced the song alongside No I.D. It is released as the second single of Jay-Z's upcoming studio album 'The Blueprint 3'. After the song was released to iTunes on August 11th 2009, it jumped to the third position on the Billboard Hot 100, making it his highest peak as a lead artist to date, it also became Rihanna's eleventh top ten hit, making her the female with the second most top ten hits this decade [2000-2009], behind Beyonce, Jay-Z's wife, who has twelve. It is also Jay-Z's first Top 5 Rap Song since 2006's 'Show Me What You Got'.

The video was directed by Anthony Mandler and was filmed on August 6th 2009 at Fort Totten Park in New York City. The director of the music video had this to say: "We wanted you to feel uneasy throughout the piece," he said. "We wanted there to be a constant layer of tension through the piece. Even in the way I shot — where the camera comes by Jay, it doesn't stop on him, it goes to Rihanna, there's kind of this chaos of revealing and covering and concealing. And things happen offscreen that you don't see.

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