Erykah Badu Window Seat Video Stirs Controversy

If you’re going to recreate one of the most shocking, harrowing and culturally resonant moments in American history in your music video, you may as well do it with style – taking a cue from the Matt and Kim clip in which the two strip down in Times Square, Erykah Badu’s video for the new track “Window Seat” features the singer walking through the streets of downtown Dallas, stripping off her clothes until she is completely naked.

While all the nakedness is going on, the video takes an unexpected turn. Badu takes a bullet to the head near the infamous grassy knoll by which President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Instead of blood, the words “Group Think” pour out of her head onto the concrete as the shaky, one-take and Zapruder-blurred fades out.

The video ends with a spoken word interlude:

“They who play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they don’t understand. They move in packs, ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another. They feel more comfortable in groups, less guilt to swallow. They are us. This is what we have become, afraid to respect the individual.”

MTV recently gathered together a series of Badu’s remarks about the hypnotic video on Twitter:

“We only had 1 shot to get it right. We didn’t plan the shot. Coodie and I just went raw dog. Too busy lookin for cops and being petrified… I held my head up and kept moving… There were children there. I prayed they wouldn’t b traumatized.”

And while nudity is often a last-ditch effort to garner sales for artists whose numbers are beginning to sink, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and wager this was done with far more artistic aspirations – at least, I think it was, unless I’m forgetting about a Ke$ha video where she gets a bullet to the back of the head at Ford’s Theatre. I could be wrong on that one, though.

Badu’s new album, New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh, is set to be released tomorrow.

What do you think of the video? Is it as controversial as everyone says it is?