One of the top stories on the internet this weekend, happened to belong to Jay-Z, Kanye West, their video "Otis", as well as a poor Maybach.
One of my top 5 rappers (Dead or Alive) happens to be Jay-Z, and he's teamed up with Kanye West for the highly anticipated "Watch the Throne" album. The first single happens to be called "Otis", using a sample of an Otis Redding Song.
The video itself was directed by Spike Jonze with the opening sequence shows the two walking toward a Maybach with a blow torch and chain saw in hand, ready to make a mess out of the $300,000 car. The video continues and 'Ye is driving the stripped car in the desert with Jay on the passenger side and 4 chicks in the backseat.
According to MTV, who happened to interview Myles Kovacs (of Dub Magazine),
"What starts out as a mint vehicle is quickly stripped down in the Spike Jonze-directed clip. With the glass roof tossed to the side, the doors ripped off and welded to the back, the front grill removed and stuck on the tail end and fender walls created out of sheet metal, Kovacs said the actual work done on the car was minimal, but the damage was maximum.
“If it’s just for show or to make a movie car, it’s pretty simple,” he said. “You’re just trashing the car, bolting on fake bumpers, pushing the wheels out, removing doors, cutting the roof off and adding flame throwers on the exhaust. But these guys are crazy to spend money to ruin a car like that.”
While ‘Ye and Jigga are clearly having a blast driving the chopped and screwed ‘Bach in “Otis,” Kovacs said at this point the frame of the car is probably buckling and it’s folding up “like a taco,” because it appears that the center roof supports have been taken out.
He originally guessed that a job like this might cost $150,000 and take two to three weeks if you were aiming to have the car be street-legal and reinforce the frame. Making it just safe enough for the video would set you back $100,000 or so. But if all they did was cut the doors and roof out and do some welding here and there, the right tech could do that in a week. Add another for painting and the right shop could get the job done for $20,000 or so.
“The thing is, the value of that car is nothing now, you couldn’t drive it on the street,” he said. “It would start malfunctioning big time.”
At the end of the video, it says “The vehicle used in this video will be offered up for auction. Proceeds will be donated towards the East African drought disaster.”
Though this created quite a buzz on many media outlets, I'm sure this helped Dr. Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the board of management of Daimler, figure out the future of the Maybach... well not totally helped him. Now if you excuse me, I have to count the number of conservative media outlets who consider Jay-Z and Kanye West "Gangster Rappers", despite the number of times they made it to the Forbes List.
