In our last post we mentioned the upcoming premier of these highly anticipated videos. Now, we have them right here, just waiting to be analyzed. “Power” turned out to actually be a moving painting. No one really knew what to expect from Kanye, but he blew our minds once again, bending all the boundaries of conventional music videos. “Love The Way You Lie” told the story of a couple in love, yet constantly at war with each other. A moving video that brought to life Eminem’s dramatic lyrics.

Judge the videos for yourself!

I’ve heard people complain about MTV’s slow and steady transformation away from music videos and music in general towards the world of reality television. In today’s world where a few guidos can get together and make a world-renowned show called  Jersey Shore who can really disagree?

But tonight, MTV decided to make a change. It will be the first channel to debut Eminem ft. Rihanna’s “Love The Way You Lie” at 9pm ET/PT and Kanye West’s “Power” at 11pm ET.

Eminem celebrates his return to sobriety with a music video starring Megan Fox and Dominic Monaghan. Obviously, the only real way to make a music video for a song thats been atop the Billboard charts for weeks is to have experienced actors take over.

As for the infamously arrogant, yet artistically unmatched Kanye West we are definitely in for a treat. “It’s not a video, it’s a painting,” said West about “Power” and after that statement I honestly don’t think anyone truly knows what magic West will perform this time. All we can expect as of now is Ye walking around with a really heavy gold chain as can be seen in the one preview photo of “Power.”

West has already thanked MTV via his brand new Twitter account for choosing to preview his video right after the channel’s most watched show, Jersey Shore. West’s outright admittance of true appreciation can only be a sign of real change in the world and, who knows, maybe this change will make music videos king of MTV once again.

“I hope to be remembered as someone who opened doors to the next generation”

-Miri Ben Ari

Hip-hop and classical music, the Middle East and America. A few things you might imagine to be very different all come together in the complex, imaginative, unique being that is Miri Ben Ari.

Ben Ari, who grew up in Israel, is the pioneer of an entirely new sound. She mixes classical, the genre she was initially trained in as a young girl, with jazz R&B and hip-hop making her the first ever hip-hop violinist. She has worked with Kanye West, Jay-Z and Wyclef jean among many other greats to help sell millions of world famous records. Ben Ari has been recognized with a Grammy, the Apollo Theatre has named her an “Apollo Legend” and her song “Symphony of Brotherhood” was the first instrumental single to make it on the Billboard R&B/hip-hop charts.

View some of her collaborations and personal work below.

More photos here.

Related: Kanye’s Photographer Nabil Elderkin Ain’t No Joke, Naibil Elderkin @ I the Beholder, KiD CuDi x Nabil Elderkin @ Dat New Cudi

Previously: Kanye West | Wireless Music Festival July 2009 Photos

Tablet talk has posted an interview with Danny Clinch, wherein he speaks on working with Annie Leibovitz, transitioning from a still photography to film making, and photographing “ordinary people.”

Kanye West threw up some nice images from one of his performances in London last summer on his blog. Unfortunately, there’s no photo attribution, so we’re not sure who to thank.

(vi@ Nah Right)

UPDATE: Photos were taken by Nabil Elderkin, who has more Kanye tour photos here. Video promo for Kanye + Elderkin’s  Glow in The Dark photobook after the jump.

Former Roc-A-Fella A&R head honcho Lenny Santiago recently sat down with the.LIFE Files and let them peek into his iPhoto library, where he has exclusive behind-the-scenes shots of Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G., Kanye West, Mary J. Blige and more.

We love Lenny and would love to peruse his archives, but if he was charging $300 a photo twelve years ago, he could single-handedly throw us into a personal recession.

ALSO: Jay-Z: A Photo History

(vi@ the.LIFE Files)

In June 2005, Clay Patrick McBride—who’d done innumerable projects for magazines, dozens of album covers and print campaigns for multinational conglomerates—orchestrated the photo shoot which may be his defining set. “It’s still some of the best work I’ve made,” says McBride. “It’s the bar that I measure everything up against. Like, when will I do work that’s as good, better, that’s as well-executed and conceived as that work?”

On the surface, it seemed routine: to capture then Def Jam Records president Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and his morphing Roc-a-Fella roster for the cover of XXL magazine. “I can photograph a big group like nobody else,” McBride says. “That’s my strength. I take control of situations.” Challenging himself, the photographer decided to imbue the shoot with gravitas and played up the “President Carter” angle by re-creating classic portraits from John F. Kennedy’s administration. “I’m always looking to photojournalism as a way of telling stories, because they tell stories all the time. They’re always bringing us the information.”

He thought to use the Oval Office set from the TV drama The West Wing, but in the end decided to build his own from scratch. The detailing was extravagant, down to the Roc-A-Fella logo in the carpet. Two “giant” studios were rented, one just for talent and crew and entourages, partitioned off with foam core. LeBron James showed up because, in Jay’s words, “I got reach.” Camera crews from national entertainment news outlets showed up. There was a lot of pressure. “But then you had Jay there kinda running the show,” recalls McBride. “As much as it was my photo shoot, he was the one cracking the whip, telling everybody to hustle.”

The photographer focused on capturing the perfect images; visuals that were both sacred and blasphemous—destined to inspire and infuriate. “I have to think of the people who those images might have pissed off, like any of those confederate flag–wearing, Ku Klux Klan, white supremacist, weird skinhead people,” he says. “I hope the pictures made some people think, because that’s what its intention was. It wasn’t just another picture of hip-hop. I think it was saying something about what a person’s potential is.”

I was quite snobby before, like, ‘I only shoot film,’” confesses Phil Knott. But the cheeky Brit, who got his start by leaving the slow academia of college for the real-life experience of a studio assistant, is becoming synonymous with avant-garde digital manipulation on both sides of the Atlantic. “I prefer digital now. I like post-work, but it’s all very rough. It’s not like slick Photoshop; it’s more like New York: painted graffiti with layers piled upon layers.”

Before going digital, Knott would have to make multiple shoots, with numerous trips to the printer to create backgrounds and overlays. “Back in the day, it was done by going through books and photocopying the shit out of these things at Kinko’s, and that would take two days out of your time,” he says. “Now you go and do your bits on digital camera, come back, and you just drop them in your own computer. It’s a lot easier.”

It only sounds like the visual equivalent of Auto-Tune. In Knott’s hands, a post-shoot tool suite is used to enhance, not cover up. “Everything must be good enough to stand alone before you start messing around with it or else it’s kind of lame,” he says. His raw images remain stark, riveting compositions, bleeding with a full spectrum of richness and a matrix of color. From there, he may use lighting techniques and filters to build up or downplay contrast. Or he may spend days (and “a lot of late nights”) pulling elements from his library of photos, adding and subtracting until an image makes itself clear—all to come up with that one representation that melds his comic book influences, his posterlike tendencies and his quest to “make the picture what it sounds like.” Along the way, he saves different iterations of his work, usually about 50 ideas per final shot. “Even if you don’t use it as something, it’s always good notes for something else,” he says. “The end of one thing is mostly the starting point for the next thing you’re doing.”

All of this encroaches on territory traditionally under the auspices of art directors and graphic designers, but for Knott the extension is natural. “When I’m doing post stuff, it’s like, ‘Let me entertain you,’” he says. “It’s just an experimentation with things. Maybe it’s kind of silly, but I find it really boring if you don’t wanna keep pushing and pushing and learning something new.”