Did Kanye West Steal The Intro To “All Of The Lights” Video?

Many critics and magazines are accusing Kanye West of ripping off French-director Gaspar Noe’s “Enter the Void” opening sequence.

Everyone’s been talking about it — the intro to the Hype Williams-directed music video for Kanye West’s “All of the Lights” looks a bit too much like the opening titles to Gaspar Noe’s art-flick “Enter the Void.”

The part in question features strobe-lit block names/lyrics which, in Noe’s film, are meant to resemble the neon lights of Tokyo’s central district. While there is no denying the obvious similarities between the music video and film intro, the incident brings about an old issue: where do we draw the line between hommage and plagiarism?

As obscure as Gaspar Noe’s films may be, there’s no way that Hype Williams and Kanye West thought not one of their fans (the youtube video play count is at around 5 million as of today) would realize where the idea came from. The intro scene and music video were clearly meant to be a nod to Noe — Hype and Kanye may have just taken the reference a little too far.

It’s unclear whether the two got permission from the French director to use his work. Both director and rapper have been pretty quiet about the subject. The only thing we’ve heard is a tweet from Kanye West, which reads “context is everything… something good taken out of context can become bad.” Yes, Kanye. It can also become a lawsuit.

Regardless, and as noted by Fader, the “Enter the Void” intro is itself an hommage to Jean-Luc Godard’s 1961 “A Woman is A Woman” title sequence.

Let’s keep the endless idea-recycling going, guys.