Though Kanye West’s new video is full of the anguish and sins of the world, he ends ‘Wash Us In The Blood’ on a peaceful note – with his daughter, North West, dancing while in a moment of pure serenity.
“Wash us in the blood of Jesus,” echoes the voice of Kanye West at the end of his video for his new song with Travis Scott, “Wash Us In The Blood.” As Kanye, 43, repeats these words, his new visual (released on June 30) ends on a clip of his eldest child, North West, 7, dancing at one of his Sunday Service rehearsals. North feels the power of the gospel music surge through her, and she quietly sings along. It was a powerful way to end the new visual, considering all the violent imagery that proceeded it. His video included clips of heated confrontations between the police and Black Men, teens fighting each other in the streets, an unmanned drone in wartime, Black people struggling to breathe, and a clip of Ahmaud Arbery before he was killed.
North West was the star of Kanye’s last video, “Closed On Sunday.” The song is best known for its chorus (“Closed On Sunday, you’re my Chick-fil-A”), and at the end of the video, North screams the words “Chick-fil-A” at the top of her lungs. Nori has proved that she has inherited her father’s musical talents, as she rapped at Kanye’s Yeezy Season 8 fashion show in Paris.
“Wash Us In The Blood” comes from Kanye’s forthcoming album, God’s Country. In the track, released hours before the video, Kanye begs for the “Holy Spirit” to “come down.” He also spends a verse taking a shot at the people “trying to control” him, per Genius. “They want me to calm down / They don’t want me to be Kanye / They don’t want Kanye to be Kanye / They wanna sign a fake Kanye, they tryna sign a calm ‘Ye / That’s right I call him Calm-Ye, but don’t take me the wrong way / But don’t take me the wrong way, its got took me a long way.”
The video was directed by Arthur Jafa, who let the cat out of the bag about Ye’s new project during a conversation with Michèle Lamy in May. “It’s from his new record, it’s called God’s Country. And this will be like the first single off of it,” he said about this video, per Genius. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to not be announcing it.. it may be spilling the beans… But yeah, it’s from the new record, the forthcoming, I don’t know when the album is coming now but the single maybe sometime next week. Maybe, it’s not definite.”
God’s Country will be Kanye’s first album since dropping Jesus Is King in October 2019. He also released Jesus Is Born on Christmas of that year, but the album didn’t feature any of Kanye’s vocals. Judging by this first single, it seems that Kanye’s next album may be a marriage of his old style with his new spiritual perspective.