Holy Grail Jay Z: Rapper Debuts Music Video with Justin Timberlake on Facebook [Watch Here]
Jay Z has finally released the music video for his single "Holy Grail" exclusively on his Facebook page. The big reveal was made earlier today (Aug. 29) at noon, and featured another music heavyweight Justin Timberlake.
While the song in the video underwent a few rearrangements compared to the record - several parts dropping to slow-mo, including Timberlake's soulful segments - It was still well received by the public. With a 24-hour exclusivity with Facebook, the video so far has close to 160,000 likes, more than 68,000 shares and 9,407 comments.
Moreover, according to Billboard.com, "Holy Grail" is first ever major music video to debut on the social networking site. The video will play on "Facebook's proprietary video player" exclusively until noon of Friday, Aug. 30.
"What we're doing with Jay Z today is really exciting and we think emblematic of the evolution for music and how musicians can connect with their fans," Nick Grudin, head of content partnerships for Facebook, said in a statement. "And we think that is particularly evident in Jay Z's approach here, which will really allow him to go direct to a massive and instant global audience."
Billboard notes that Jay Z and Timberlake have a combined 42 million fans of Facebook - 17M for the rapper and 25M for JT. With such numbers, an exclusive release on Facebook could help gain the video the initial viewership boost.
"It's something that only Facebook I think can really deliver in this way, given the scale of the audiences musicians have and the global nature of those audiences and the social dynamics of what happens when they engage on Facebook," added Grudin.
The music video for "Holy Grail" was directed by Anthony Mandler, who has worked with the likes of Beyonce, Rihanna and Taylor Swift, reports Huffington Post. The single also marks the Grammy Award winning artists' second collaboration in a music video - the first one was for Timberlake's video "Suit & Tie."