Times when Jay-z and Kanye West were still making music together seem so far now and looking back to the past ten, glorious years of hip hop is painful because it takes you back to feelings you will probably never catch again.

One of the biggest strengths of music is turning pieces of clothing, items and mostly cars into emblems of the personality and world’s vision of the artist. This is exactly the function music videos fulfill.

When ‘’Watch the Throne’’ dropped, it bounced at the top of the charts in 23 countries and a similar success hit the music video of the single ‘’Otis’’, which became the manifesto of the whole album. Subjects of the clip were the two artists, in what seems to be a forsaken industry, ripping off a 2004 Maybach 57 and reassembling it like they lost the instructions manual.

The result is likely one of the most iconic music video cars of all time.

The luxury sedan wasn’t obviously modified by the two rappers as the video would suggest: it was commissioned to Shelly Ward Industries, a company specialized in car preparations for movies and Hollywood projects.

The Frankenstein-Maybach was put up for auction, in 2012, at Phillips de Pury & Company and marketed as a piece of contemporary art rather than an automobile with aftermarket modifications: despite retailing for $350,000, estimates for the auction placed the value around $150,000, but it only fetched $60,000 (at the time), fully donated to ‘’save the children’’ as promised by the artists.