Yesterday, I showed you Drake’s new video “Find Your Love”, and I commented about how the overhyped rapper was growing on me, thanks to said video as well as his appearance as a co-writer and background vocalist on Alicia Keys’ “Un-Thinkable (I’m Ready)”. The song, a standout track on Keys’ latest album “The Element of Freedom”, has been getting significant rotation in my apartment for half a year now.

While I guess the lyrics of the song can be interpreted in several different ways (I shared my opinion on the song’s meaning in a Smoothed Out Sundays column a couple weeks back), for the video, Alicia has decided that “the un-thinkable” can be related back to interracial romance. It’s a topic not often brought up in music video land, and being that Ms. Keys is bi-racial herself, it somehow seems right that she explore the topic in her work. At the very least, the video makes you think. I’m fortunate to live in an urban environment where multi-cultural couples are somewhat commonplace (and I’ve been involved in more than my share of interracial relationships myself), but I’m also smart enough to know that seeing people of two different races mixing together can still get reactions ranging from indignant stares to family ostracism (I often wonder what would be worse-me telling my folks that I’m into dudes or me telling them I’m into dudes and then bringing home a white dude) to physical violence-even in 2010. Kudos to Alicia for exploring the topic, and even more kudos to Alicia for just making a great song.