Tuesday, September 2, 2008

I <3 This Video

And it's even a T-Pain song! [Embedding disabled by request (but seriously, watch it)]

My favorite parts (OMG SPOILERZ!): "Welcome to WISCANSIN" and the pantomime bear with a top-hat.

There's a really excellent air of whimsy here, which I REALLY appreciate, especially in hip-hop videos. Despite the fact that there is just as much weed being smoked in your average rapper's abode as in your average rock band's—if not more—the videos tend to be relatively formulaic, at least in comparison to rock videos. (Which is not to say rock videos aren't formulaic; cars, girls, and [artificial-]wind-swept performances are now wholly cliché, largely thanks to the '80s. But it is precisely because rock videos had the 80s, in all their leather-clad overabundance, that such formulas have had the time and exposure to become cliché in the first place. The format's been given time to breathe a bit, I suppose.) This could be because of the smaller corpus, but I suspect at least as much credit has to be placed on the lack of wide-scale involvement in hip-hop videos by over-moneyed white boys with film degrees. I would point to Sabotage by the Beastie Boys as an example of what could have been.

I suppose some consideration could be given to the possibility, over time, of the more marginalized "indie" rap genres coming to prominence as a percentage of the overall cultural share of "hip-hop," in a way comparable to the progress made by "indie" music over the years. But I have to go pay rent now.



[BONUS ADD EMBED:

Pantomime Horses! It's a cold world.]

1 comment:

Omnibus said...

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!