By Calvin Stovall

If you don’t suffer from epilepsy then you made it safely through The Throne’s new video for “N***as in Paris.” The fact that it wasn’t actually shot in France bummed me out at first, but the flashing lights, Masonic imagery and classic shots of Kanye bopping were enough to make me run it back a few times. As impressive as the fancy camera work and editing were (the updated concert vocals were a nice touch, too) after a couple watches I was left asking, “What was the point of that?” These days, it doesn’t matter how much hype a video has or how amazing it actually is, most fans will only watch it once or twice online and then never think about it again.

Gone are the days of Rap City, when a video was as important for promotion as anything. Back then, videos were the only way other than the radio to hear new music until the album dropped. They were also one of the only ways for fans to actually see the artist and build a connection. Now Twitter and the non-stop flow of interviews and exclusives coming from blogs provide a much deeper and more relatable picture of an artist than a four-minute clip of them posing and lip-syncing. 106 & Park and MTV JAMS are still rocking, but neither is enough to save music videos from becoming the latest media to be killed by the Internet.

The video themselves can’t do anything about it either. From M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” to Freddie Gibbs’ “Thuggin’,” artists are still finding captivating and creative ways to bring their music to the screen. The very best may get a favorite stamp on YouTube and enjoy some buzz from the blogs, but after the initial rush, most videos come and go with little to no fanfare.

The Internet doesn’t have to be the death of the music video, though. Like music, magazines and other media that struggled at first to find their place on the web, music videos simply need to evolve if they want to survive. If the people creating videos can find a way to make the universality of the web work in their favor instead of against them, the music video could go from struggling medium to a golden era. But how? I’m no expert, but I do know less is more. I applaud Rick Ross’ work ethic, but there is no need to shoot a video for every song off of your mixtape. The bad acting and low-quality visuals in the “Yella Diamonds” video were entertaining, but only the first time. If all the creative energy and money spent on making six average videos were put into figuring out innovative ways to make one or two, we might figure something out. It also couldn’t hurt to ask the fans. There is an obscene amount of user-generated content available on Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube that artists could be mining for inspiration. If music videos are going to survive the next decade, some big changes will have to be made. Judging from our culture’s past, we’ll figure something out.

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