STRESS

"Stress" is a song by French electronic music duo Justice, the tenth track on their debut studio album .[a] A music video for the song, directed by Romain Gavras, was released on 1 May 2008 through the website of American rapper Kanye West. The video, which was subject to severe criticism, is notable for its extremely controversial content, which includes scenes of young teenagers committing acts of gang violence across Paris. The song itself received positive reviews from critics.

The video received heavy criticism, resulting in immediate backlash from the public[10] and a ban from French television.[13] The video was criticized as racist.[10][12] In response to this criticism, Gaspard Augé of Justice said "We were expecting some fuss obviously, but definitely not on those topics... If people see racism in the video, it's definitely because they might have a problem with racism; because all they see is black people beating up white people, which is not what's happening in the video."[14]

In an interview with Fact in 2016, de Rosnay noted that the National Front and anti-racist organizations both threatened to sue the duo over the video after its release.[11] The video was named as one of the most controversial music videos of all time by both Dazed and NME.[7][12] Daniel Kreps of Rolling Stone compared the video to events of the Grand Theft Auto video game series, which is notable for containing events of violence similar to the ones in the music video for "Stress".[15] Jeffrey T. Iverson of Time also compared the video to the films La Haine, Man Bites Dog, and A Clockwork Orange, all of which feature similar events of violence as well.[10] Complex was less critical of the music video and awarded it the number 2 spot on their "100 Best Music Videos of the 2000s" list, commenting that "the images are so arresting that you can't look away for even a second."[13]

Source: Wikipedia