Kanye West - Stronger

What this video is

Released July 31, 2007, 'Stronger' arrived as the lead single from Kanye West's third studio album Graduation, a commercial and critical landmark. The video fused hip-hop visual spectacle with Japanese cyberpunk — drawing explicit visual reference to the 1988 anime film Akira — at a moment when hip-hop and electronic music were converging culturally. The song sampled Daft Punk's 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,'…

Why it matters

'Stronger' is widely recognized as a turning point in hip-hop's visual and sonic ambition. It demonstrated that hip-hop could command blockbuster production values, anime-referencing visual storytelling, and genre-blurring electronica sampling simultaneously. The video cemented Hype Williams's…

The director

Harold 'Hype' Williams (born August 1, 1970, Queens, NY) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He attended Adelphi University and pioneered his visual style through graffiti, influenced by Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Regarded…