Kanye West 'Power' Video Debuts on MTV

Kanye West debuted his 'Power' video last night at 11:00PM, immediately after MTV's hit show 'The Jersey Shore.' Running only 1:42 minutes, the Marco Brambilla-directed video encapsulates the theme of power in what Kanye calls, "a moving painting." We first see just West in the painting, wearing the $300,000 Horus chain he sported at last month's BET Awards. But as our view pulls away in slow-mo from the classical painting, we see a slew of women -- both saints and sinners -- some painted symmetrically, while detailed wings, sheaths and daggers move around Kanye.

In the song, West fiercely, and confidently, raps over a sample of King Crimson's '21st Century Schizoid Man,' explaining that he's trying to find that balance of power, and to better fuel his extraordinary talent. After all, "No one man should have all that power / The clock's tickin', I just count the hours / Stop trippin', I'm trippin' off the power."

But his contemporary outlook on dealing with fame and power is in fact, referenced back to a Greek legend in this video. The sword hanging above Kanye's head -- according to the Boombox -- is the sword of Damocles, which comes from the legend of Damocles and Dionysius. The story goes that the powerful and authoritative Dionysius II offers to switch places for the day, so that Damocles could witness what it was like to have fortune and power. At a banquet, Damocles is waited on like a king, only to notice a sharpened sword hanging by a single horse-hair, directly above his head. At that moment he realized the gamble of having wealth and power was not worth it to him.

The Brambilla and West collaboration happened after the rapper noticed the director's 'Civilzation' installation at New York's Standard Hotel. It was his combination of sexual overtones with religious imagery, that swayed West to have Brambilla create this video.

West took to twitter last night, acknowledging MTV's kind actions: "Thank you MTV for letting for putting POWER right after your #1 show. IFEELTHELOVE!... and thanks for the 2nd I mean 3rd ok 4th chance!!!" Check out the video below: