Mandler has been quoted on that site I don't link to (no source is cited) as saying
I showed [Jay] some references from the classic rebellious zones of the world. We live in very orderly society in America, but when you get into Brazil, you get into the Middle East, you get into Africa, you get into Eastern Europe, when you get into places like that, there's a different sort of 'we run this town' [going on]. There's less order and more chaos. So we looked at a lot of those references, new photos and historical photos, to capture that kind of falling-apart feeling.
Back in 2009, you had to do research to create a video like "Run This Town." Watch it now, in 2020, and you might as well be watching a live newscast from Portland or somewhere.
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I wrote the above portion of this post last night. I had planned to include a picture of the cover art for the "Run This Town" single and point out its similarity to Biden campaign logos -- another link to 2020. But something interrupted me, I went to bed without finishing the post, and here I am doing it the next day. So, here's the cover art for "Run This Town."
Why three horizontal red lines? Apparently because the single is from the album The Blueprint 3, and that album and all the singles from it (with the single exception of "D.O.A.") feature those three lines -- which signify nothing more interesting than the number three. "Run This Town" is unique, though, in having nothing but those three lines.
Here, in case you've forgotten what they look like, are two of Joe Biden's 2020 campaign logos.
By the way, how clueless is the guy who designed the logo on the left, given that there's also someone named Jo (the Libertarian Party's Jo Jorgensen) running for president in 2020? The one on the right, on the other hand, is rather neat: "Bid 3 N" -- a bid to be elected on 3 November.
So, anyway, a mildly interesting coincidence: A 2009 music video full of unmistakable 2020 imagery is branded with three horizontal red lines -- a branding choice also made by one of the 2020 presidential campaigns.
Checking the other Blueprint 3 singles just now, I found a much funnier coincidence. Here's the cover art for "A Star Is Born."
If the three horizontal red lines represent the letter E, as in the Biden logos, then this says "A star is Bern" -- i.e., Biden's main rival in the primaries, Bernie Sanders!
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Now, why, you are wondering, did I bother telling you that I started the post last night and finished it the next day? Because of what happened in between: breakfast.
We get lots of junk mail, and when I eat takeout (as I often do) I am in the habit of using a piece of that junk mail as a makeshift placemat to keep the table clean. This morning I tore a page out of some promotional material from Costco, put my breakfast on it, and ate. Only after I had finished did I notice what was on the paper itself. It startled me enough that I took a photo.
Those three red lines again, exactly like the ones on the Jay-Z records! (They were printed as vertical lines, of course, but I had turned the paper to landscape orientation for placemat purposes.)
Looking at the photo on my phone after I had taken it, I noticed yet another coincidence. I was going to crop the photo to show just the three lines and a small amount of text to show that it was from Costco junk mail, but then I noticed that the photo as I had snapped it fortuitously included four very large Chinese characters: 好市多黑. This is from 好市多黑鑽卡, which is the Chinese name for a Costco Executive Membership Card, but only those four characters made it into the photo. Translate them literally, character for character, and what do you get?
I don't know what the synchronicity fairies are getting at with all this, but they've certainly got my attention!
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Note added:
I just noticed this bit of the photo I posted -- the one with the three red bars and "good city many black":
A right-pointing star, as in the D20 logo, and the words cover story. The intended meaning, of course, is "a report or article connected with the picture on the front of a magazine" -- but it also means "a story someone tells in order to hide the truth."
Second note added:
I don't know how I missed this before, but cover story -- accompanied by a star -- has an additional meaning: the three red bars came from record covers, one of which was "A Star Is Born" (or "Bern," as the case may be).
