We’ll see who has the last laugh

Let me guess, Kanye West is upset that his relationship with his fiance Alexis Phifer has gone the way of Noz's career here at XXL, and this new video for "Flashing Lights" is his way of getting back at her.

That's the best explanation I've been able to come up with so far. The thing is, we don't really have a whole lot of information about the video. It just sort of appeared on the Internets over the weekend, and I've read on a few sites that it wasn't actually meant to see the light of day.

I don't read Kanye's blog/discount travel scam operation, but as far as I know, he hasn't weighed in on it one way or another. Otherwise, I probably would've seen it excerpted on one of these sites that's more diligent about excerpting things.

Could it be that the reason we've yet to hear much from Kanye re: the new "Flashing Lights" is because he didn't want it to be seen, because he came up with the concept for it in a fit of rage against his ex, and then decided not to release it because people might think he's a psycho? Hmm...

When I posted it to my own site yesterday, I wondered aloud what the point to it might be - since, like the other "Flashing Lights" clips, it's not exactly clear what he means to suggest.

One guy responded that this might be a sort of after school special about the dangers of drinking and going out to kick it too much. In the video, you see the girl rolling off the bed at the ass crack of noon, and then the first thing she does is have a drink. Which sounds like some shit I might do. Then she goes out and ends up getting raped. Which, according to this guy, is the consequence of the kind of life she leads.

Which didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. I mean, I doubt stumbling home drunk every night of the week improves your chances of not being violently raped in a back alley - but is that really what Kanye meant to convey here? That would seem a bit obvious, even for the guy who made "Jesus Walks." Plus, I think we all know that a good 9+ times out of 10, what's considered rape in this country isn't actually the violent back alley scenario depicted in this video.

I responded that a more likely interpretation of this clip might be that this is the kind of high class broad who feels that she's too good to keep a man around, and that what happened to her in that alley would be one example of why a man sometimes comes in handy. For example, if I had been walking home with her (so I could have sex with her), this wouldn't even have been an issue. Unless the assailants were especially scary-looking, in which case she would've been left to her own devices, while I hightailed it to the nearest subway station.

But she still would've been better off than she would've been walking by herself.

One of the things that struck me about the first part of the video, before the rape scene, was the man-less existence this broad led. When she woke up in the afternoon, there was no evidence that a guy lived there, or had even been there the night before. (What a crime!) She had a really nice place, but it wasn't clear to me what she contributed to society in order to be able to afford it. For example, it didn't look like she had the mindset to maintain a high quality blog, despite her prodigious alcohol intake.

She was living the way you might expect a guy to live, if he had the means. And maybe the point the video was trying to make is that it's not natural for a woman to live like that.

Keep in mind, all of this occurred to me before I even considered the relationship angle. But now that I have, it makes even more sense, if you can imagine. Clearly, to me at least, this video was meant as a message to Kanye's ex - that she tripped when she walked out on him; and that now that she's alone, she's gonna get what she's got coming to her.

I don't think he meant to suggest that she's gonna get raped in the literal since of the term (god forbid). But I think he meant to suggest that whatever she's got coming to her, it's not gonna be preferable to what she could've had if she'd stayed with him. The rape scene was just a particularly violent (and hence that much more cinematic) way of dramatizing this point of view. More likely, she'll end up trying to pitch a reality series to the E! network, or trying to have one of these NBA players' babies, for that child support money.

What do you ball players think? Was I on point with my interpretation? And who do you think took an L when Kanye and his ex split? I mean, clearly she's still got a lot to offer a man (though I don't know what her attitude is like), but there just aren't that many brothers with checks, now are there? For what it's worth, some of the white chicks Kanye's been pictured with haven't exactly been dimes, either. Not that I'd be complaining. I'm just saying. Speak on it.