Drake ft. Rihanna - Take Care: Music Video Review

Five Things We’ve Learnt from the Take Care Video!

By Josh Webb /

For a song that's already been in the top 50 since (seemingly) the last decade and only troubled the top 10 once, the anticipation for the Take Care video was hardly going to be sky-high but for those still holding out for more legs-akimbo dancing and innuendo-laden milk carton spillages (as previously seen from these two in the What's My Name video) I'm sure you'll be appeased. I mean just hear those Jamie XX produced beats, all that steel drum-ness wafting around lovelorn lyrics - it's got to be set in the Caribbean, right? Probably at sunset, holding melons or something. Oh ok, now you're excited. And so we press play, expectations as high as Rihanna€™s hemlines, and we see... grey. Yes, lots and lots of grey. Oh and a bird. Nice. It€™s quite clear this isn€™t the calypso rendezvous previously imagined. When the snowy mountains kick in, all hope seems to be lost until Rihanna arrives. Hurrah! Red-blooded males rejoice! Wait she€™s wearing a cardigan, cancel everything. Yes, this is the freezing cold to What€™s My Name€™s urban heat and it doesn€™t plan on getting much warmer, unless you count a nice hug as the height of passion.So apart from Rihanna grappling with woven items of clothing and Drake staring at every direction but the camera and arm-gesturing like there€™s no tomorrow, we are treated to more snowy mountain-ness, an perplexed bird, an angry bull, an angry man, a falling man (who€™s probably quite angry about that) and some flying black fish. It€™s simple and pretty but a very bizarre mix of images that don€™t really have much to do with the song. Once you know that Yoann €˜Woodkid€™ Lemoine is at the helm of this, it kind of makes sense. Watch his video for Iron or the new Lana Del Rey Blue Jeans video and you€™ll see what I mean. It€™s all very tonal, random and usually features an exotic animal or five. Whereas his direction fitted the renaissance pomp of his own work and Hollywood noir-ed up Lana Del Rey (crocodiles in the pool anyone?), here it feels a tad jarring. You just end up waiting for Del Rey to pop out of the shadows with a champagne glass and a revolver, gilded chimps at her side, yodelling about doomed starlets. So by the end, there€™s a burnt down forest and more hugging but not any real conclusion (not that music videos these days conform to narrative conventions or anything). Ok, I accept maybe it€™s a metaphor for their relationship and the constant fighting they€™ve had to deal with but really, most straight guys were waiting for the Rihanna bum-shot and many girls probably were too. I applaud Lemoine for trying something different visually for an R&B song that isn€™t really that R&B but one popstar + one Young Money rapper/singer + upcoming British indie producer + French pop-alt director isn€™t necessarily a working equation. Still, with Take Care climbing up the chart a place last week, maybe there€™s more life to this than all the grey-ness suggests. Five Things We€™ve Learnt from the Take Care Video 1. Nice to see the ninja from Adele€™s Rolling in the Deep video has found another gig. He€™s clearly not happy that someone€™s stolen his magical cane of Grammy-granting splendour mind. 2. Rihanna€™s cardigan can€™t quite decide whether it wants to be there or not whereas Drake is clearly jealous that he€™s losing out in the love triangle he€™s found himself in. It€™s like Coronation Street but in Grey-o-vision. 3. Mr Bird doesn€™t liked to be filmed. Mr Bird is not ready for his close-up. Mr Bird does not DO close-ups. Mr Bird simply flaps and opens his one eye weirdly. 4. Mr Bull, on the other hand, is milking this moment like an ample cow in a dairy commercial. He knows his angles. Dodge that army of Red Indians and their feeble arrows sir, Werk it *finger snap*. 5. Slow!