Simian Mobile Disco outsmarts Kanye
Simian album's nuances and lyrics develop with listening.
Published Sept. 25, 2007
About 11 months ago, Kanye West stormed onstage at the MTV Europe Video Music Awards to protest the loss of his "Touch the Sky" video to Simian vs. Justice's "We Are Your Friends" in the Best Video category ("It cost a million dollars. ... I was jumping across canyons," reasoned West.)
Quite the "controversy" this was, so much so that even "reputable" news sources such as Fox News and CNN picked up the story, as if West had stormed the stage of the president's inauguration and claimed that George W. Bush ran an immigrant prostitute ring.
Such is the world we live in, though. It could have been a decent clip played during a break in "Date My Mom," but the "MTV News" fodder became an international incident.
The funny moment became a notorious moment, which became an annoying moment around the time your mom saw it on "The Today Show" and asked you if you saw that clip of that "crazy rapper at that awards show."
The bright side is that it gave some shine to "We Are Your Friends," a really good, shamelessly '80s-style remix of British rock band Simian's "Never Be Alone," by then well-known-if-you-knew-the-right-people French duo Justice.
Justice, via their excellent debut album †
