Jay-Z Recruits Harvey Keitel, LeBron James For "D.O.A." Video

The video for Jay-Z's "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)" premiered last night, June 28th, following the BET Awards, where Janet Jackson capped a night of Michael Jackson tributes with a brief speech thanking fans for their support and Jay took the stage to perform his latest single. The video opens up with a hat tip to Jay-Z's recent distribution deal with Warner Music, as the label's CEO Lyor Cohen is seen chauffeuring the rapper to an abandoned warehouse, opening the luxury car door for Jay-Z and saluting Jigga as he exits the vehicle. As Rock Daily previously reported, Blueprint 3, Jay-Z's first album on Roc Nation, will be distributed by Warner Music's Atlantic Records.

From the warehouse, Jay-Z bounces from the jazz club to the Italian restaurant, where the chef comes out to talk to Jay. (We're pretty sure the restaurant is Harlem's own Rao's, an ultra-exclusive eatery that doesn't normally allow cameras to film inside, let alone in the kitchen, where Jay-Z, the chef and guest Harvey Keitel start a game of high-stakes poker.) If a cameo by Winston Wolf wasn't enough, Jay is later seen playing one-on-one basketball with LeBron James. Jigga's odyssey ends with a trip to the barber to get his hair cut.

And like every good video, there's pyrotechnics, as big necklaces emblazoned with giant A's for "Auto-Tune" are blown-up along with today's bright retro-inspired wear and, of course, boxes of Auto-Tune. As Rock Daily previously reported, The Blueprint 3 is out September 11th, exactly eight years to the day that the original Blueprint was released. Last night's BET Awards also featured Jay-Z performing "D.O.A." live, which you can watch over at YouTube.

Related Stories:
• Jay-Z Calls For "Death Of Auto-Tune" With "Blueprint 3" Cut
• Kanye West Nixes Auto-Tune on Jay-Z's "Blueprint 3"
• Jay-Z Buys Out Def Jam Contract, "Blueprint 3" Heads to Roc Nati

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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