Music Video
The music video for the single was directed by Jason "Jay Will" Williams and M.I.A., and shot in Jamaica towards the end of April 2007. On the day of her arrival, Williams took M.I.A. to Dutty Fridays, a well known club in the country, where she met some dancers. The musician Beenie Man had the song played by the DJ in the club continuously for 45 minutes that night. It eventually created a dance revolution in the country, attracting so much attention that the island's dance crews arrived en masse for the video shoot. Photographs from the set of the video appeared on the internet in early May, prompting speculation about her outfits and hair in the video. The video features M.I.A. singing and dancing in serene surroundings with vibrant, neon colours and animation graphics, accompanied by several male dancers of the different dance crews in Jamaica. One scene sees M.I.A. dancing around a defunct car. The video premiered on M.I.A.'s official website and MySpace page on 10 June 2007. In the "Making of 'Boyz' video" feature, Arulpragasam stated she "wanted the frame to end up looking just like ripped-off flyer posters." She took the video to England, before completing graphics for it in New York.
Talking about the making of the video in Jamaica, which she described as the high point during the making of her album, she said "I had so much cooperation and dedication from the dancers. As soon as I played it one time and they totally got it. Nobody questioned nothing. Nobody cares, you know? It was just like, "Has it got a good beat? Does it make me wanna dance? That's enough for us.". She continued "I hoped the Jamaicans would get it. They meant so much to me at the time I was writing . I went there to shoot the video, and they loved it! When I took it back there and played it to those people and showed them, ‘This is what I wrote when I thought about you,’ they got it. And that makes me feel like I don’t really care what happens with this album, and I don’t care if Interscope loves or hates me." The subversive nature of the video has also been noted by M.I.A., who aimed to be the only female in the video, with 100 male dancers singing the lyrics to the song in the video, to "treat men the way they treat us". Given issues of homophobia in the country, M.I.A. explained "It’s interesting that they are dancing and singing along to “How many, how many boys there?” and singing about boys. So… You know what I mean? So we were kind of subverting things and making them say something or accept something that they wouldn’t otherwise. So I felt like I’d achieved something with that. They don’t know that. If you print it, they’re gonna find out!" They’ll be like “whaaaaaat???” But I think that was kind of funny… I was telling my friend, “No one else could get 100 Jamaican boys to be dancing and saying ‘How many boys there?’ you know?” They just wouldn’t do that. So, yeah… I’ve done it!"
A writer in The Fader called the video "totally insane" and that viewers "have dance moves for the next 8,000 years." Sam Lewis of Drowned in Sound called the video "ludicrously colourful", comparing it favourably to the cover artwork of Kala. It was named Spinner Magazine's Video of the Day on 19 June 2007, with the return of M.I.A.'s vintage dance moves named the highlight of the video.
Read more about this topic: Boyz (song)
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