"Hey Ya"
Outkast
Dir: Bryan Barber

It's Andre 3000 x 8 in the video clip for "Hey Ya," the first single from Andre's half of the new Outkast CD, which drops this week. A sly exploitation of special-effects technology for humorous effect, the conceit isn't anything original. Nirvana and Billy Joel both put themselves on the stage of classic television programs in their videos, and the one-man band is a visual gag dating back all the way to Buster Keaton's genuinely hilarious The Playhouse. But there's no better way to promote a song by pop music's most conspicuous overachiever since Prince — who really oughta be crying himself to sleep each night clutching a copy of this album. The song is about lust without commitment and sex without strings attached, and it's probably just as well that nobody tried to illustrate that literally. The girlies in the audience screaming over Andre's performance, Beatles-style, get the point across. And it amused me to see that, while the MTV version censored the last word of Andre's couplet "Don't want to meet your momma/Just want to make you comma," Jon Stewart was making jokes about the same verb on The Daily Show, and, 40 or 50 channels over, Conan O'Brien had a masturbating bear in prime time. How sad is it that NBC has become racier than MTV? A

"The Way You Move"
Outkast
Dir: Bryan Barber

The worst you can say about Big Boi's video is that it's not quite as good as Andre's. The two are obviously of a piece, special effects showcases cut to killer grooves. This one is more conventionally sexy, accompanying a more conventionally sexy tune. Bookended by a sequence set in an auto body shop (emphasis on body, heh heh), the video takes flight along with the soaring chorus, which declares "I like the way you move," then "I love the way you move," over and over on top of a spare horn chart that shows Beyoncé's big solo move for the cheese it is. Yep, there are tons of scantily clad women on display — one typically idiosyncratic shot shows a bevy of 'em prowling the African veldt — but the atmosphere is several notches less tawdry than the current hip-hop norm. Where "Shake Ya Tailfeather" may as well be shining klieg lights on the rattling booties that get jammed into the camera lens, "The Way You Move" the similarly bootylicious Outkast joint is photographed altogether more sensually (the curves are often clad in formal wear, and occasionally fall into shadow) and respectfully, with the woman joining as equal dancing partners in Big Boi's ballroom fantasy. For the ladies, guest vocalist Sleepy Brown comes across as incredibly sexy, too. Less conceptually focused than "Hey Ya" but more imaginatively assembled, "They Way You Move" rewards multiple viewings like few videos I've seen this year. Good news — Bryan Barber, who directed both of these clips, is reportedly working on a longform project with the band for eventual broadcast on HBO. A-

"Eat You Alive"
Limp Bizkit
Dir: Fred Durst

A poor-misunderstood-me video masquerading as a psycho-boyfriend horror flick in miniature. Shot in widescreen, with maximum lens flare, and featuring Thora Birch and Bill Paxton, this is probably the most ostentatious music video of the year. Essentially, Fred Durst kidnaps girlfriend Birch, ties her up in the forest, then spends the first half of the song terrorizing her, screaming not-so-veiled threats ("I'll eat you alive!") into her face through a megaphone. Having thus terrified her, he eventually turns on the lights that he's strung from tree branches overhead and croons, "I just wanna look at you all day" before starting in with his "I'm sorry" shit. Guess what, girls — that makes him an asshole. Inexplicably charmed by this display of because-I'm-bigger-than-you emotional dysfunction, the girl goes gooey-eyed and warns Fred to run away before rescuer Paxton (playing a local cop? her daddy?) bursts out of the shadows. With any luck, Paxton'll catch up to Fred out in the trees and shoot that passive-aggressive, self-aggrandizing motherfucker between the eyes before he takes advantage of some other sweet young thing's emotions. D

"Baby Boy"
Beyonce feat. Sean Paul
Dir: Jake Nava

OK, she's pretty sexy. But her new video is disjointed, just a lot of different shit thrown together. At least "Crazy in Love" had the cinematic confluence of the singer strutting down a dark city street while those pimptastic horns blasted in the background — oh, the exploitation films I could make in my head! — but there's nothing that felicitous happening here. In one shot here, Beyoncé is writhing against a wall, breasts barely covered by a couple of silvery straps of fabric; in the next, Sean Paul is featured reclining in a sea of bikini-clad women; in the next, Beyoncé is leading an aerobics lesson on a computer-generated slab of rock embedded in the computer-generated sand of a beach next to a computer-generated ocean. The aesthetic is dark and cool, matching in mood the pounding minor-key throb of the song — you can't go wrong on the pop chart with this stuff, it seems, even if the production isn't as slick as the Neptunes or as fresh as Timbaland. Pretty soon Beyoncé is doing a little hoochie dance, apparently lit only by fire. And then, huh, song's over. It's almost like they're not even trying. C