Watch Rihanna Kill Another Dude In Her Harmony Korine Directed Video ‘Needed Me’

Rihanna’s new video for ‘Needed Me’ a track off her much-loved album Anti, seems to be continuing the Barbadian R&B singer’s theme of wreaking vengeance on the men who have wronged her. Safe to say, it’s NSFW.

‘Needed Me’ features a lot of Harmony Korine’s (who directed Kids and Spring Breakers) signature imagery: youths smoking on the street, people riding bikes in slow-mo while wearing masks, the omnipresent threat of violence, and Rihanna serenely walking around a condo overlooking the sea, holding a handgun in the air. Classic Korine, really.

In the video, Rihanna goes to a strip club with a gun, shoots a dude, and then goes and smokes a doob on a boat. Like the discussions provoked by her graphic revenge video for ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’, there is sure to be some hand-wringing about the role of violence in this video. The interesting thing is, we often see rampant gun violence in male musician’s videos and people barely bat an eyelid (ahem, Drake).

Rihanna’s album Anti is a complex, heartbreaking and brilliant record, which reveals a whole new plane to Rihanna as an artist (fun game: listen to 2007’s ‘Umbrella’ and then the whiskey-drenched ‘Higher’ off the new album, you will be shocked to your core at how much her voice has changed). It seems like she’s taking just as many artistic risks in her videos as she is her music.

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