Friends is a show that was once boycotted because of how white it was. During it's original 10-year run, between 1994 and 2004, there were only a handful of black characters with speaking roles. But now Jay-Z is here with his all-black remake, which works as the latest music video from his new album 4:44, for the track “Moonlight”.

The video, only available on Tidal for the time being, is a subversion of a subversion. Actor Jerrod Carmichael (The Carmichael Show) plays Ross, Issa Rae (Insecure) is Rachel, Tiffany Haddish (Girls Trip) is Phoebe, LaKeith Stanfield (Atlanta) is Chandler, Lil Rel Howery (Get Out) is Joey, and Tessa Thompson (Dear White People) is Monica.

The video starts with them doing a straight-up remake of a classic Friends scene from “The One Where No One’s Ready”, but gets weird and interesting when Jerrod walks off set and straight into Broad City actor and stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress, who tells him that the remake is “garbage”.

“It's just episodes of Seinfeld but with black people,” Buress goes on, referencing the fact that Friends was spawned from unproduced Seinfeld scripts. “You did a good job of subverting good comedy.”

“Black people aren't allowed to be mediocre. We always have to push up against it, and fight for our recognition”

A few minutes longer into the scene and back on set, Jerrod starts seeing the remake for what it really is; unoriginal and crass. Jay-Z's rap kicks in: “We stuck in La La Land/Even if we win, we gonna lose.” Jerrod is led off set again by Issa Rae, into a green-gass field, bathed in moonlight. We hear the moment when La La Land was accidentally announced as best picture at the Oscars and the music video cuts.

Having black actors play out the scenes from Friends essentially helps highlight how unfunny it was, and also proves that there is no way that as a black show it would have flourished in the way that it did. Black people aren't allowed to be mediocre. We always have to push up against it, and fight for our recognition – the Oscars mess-up with Moonlight works well as a metaphor in this instance.

Personally, I never really “got” the Friends thing. Yes, like every other noughties-generation kid I watched remakes of the programme on E4 after school, but I didn't find it particularly funny and even now when I watch it, finally in my 20s as the characters are, I can't identify. 

As well as, of course, being American and telling the stories of characters rich enough to live in lush apartments in the centre of New York, the show was incredibly white. And as put by documentarian Michael Moore: “In real life friends like that don’t have black friends”. The friends on Friends were not my people, and it's also been claimed that the series as a while was a rip-off of Living Single, a sitcom that centered around six African-American friends. 

“There are finally some depictions of black characters who don't find into neat, stereotypical boxes”

But what's interesting about our current generation of American TV shows, is that there are finally some depictions of black characters who don't find into neat, stereotypical boxes. Who, much like the characters on Friends, have been allowed to grow and develop. Who aren't token black faces, destined to die first in horror movies. We're finally seeing a multitude of black identities on screen.

All of the actors chosen for Jay-Z's “Moonlight” are part of this cohort. In Insecure, Issa Rae is a black woman we can all relate to. A bit messy and not fierce or flawless. Tessa Thompson in Dear White People is your woke best friend. And as proven by Tiffany Haddish and the rest of the cast in box-office hit Girls Trip, given the right circumstances, black-led comedies can flourish in the mainstream.

It feels like the choice of actors was a concious decision based on this, and while the track itself is arguably more a commentary on how rap music has become stale, there's a lot to be unpicked in the music video as it explores contemporary black creativity on screen and where we stand in comparison to the white mainstream.