Anyone have any recommendations for best hip hop music videos... and hopefully URLs for viewing online?

I'm shooting a hip hop video soon and need to see some examples (being an old guy and having lived overseas the past decade, I've kind of missed out on that trend).

Sure. Here are possibly the top 3 hip hop videos of the year.

Shake Your Tailfeathers- Nelly, P. Diddy and Murphy Lee, from the Bad Boys 2 soundtrack. It might be Shake "Ya" Tailfeathers actually. Plenty of A+ booty. This might be the supa-booty video of the year.

P.I.M.P. - 50 Cent. Nice booty in this one, plus it features the king shizzle dizzler, Snoop Dogg.

Thoia Thoing- R. Kelly some martial arts insparation and a bit of sword work, but really a thin diguise for another booty-fest.

Baby Boy- Beyonce and Sean Paul I think. More like soft porn. I'd rather watch this video than a Jenna Jameison flick for, uh, "private entertainment"....

I spent the last 20 years locked in my subterranean labratory analyzing hip hop videos trying to find the perfect formula. Just for you, here it is:
15% Fine cribs
5% Fly rides wit big pimpin rims, 24" spinners, yo
5% Bling
15% Hot b!%ches
55% in ya face booty
5% talent

I just turned on Much Music, and Baby Boy is on right now. gottago.

There is a Director's Label set of music video DVDs out there that you may want to look at ... I got the one for Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation)... truthfully I wasn't wildly impressed, but he seems to have done well for himself :). It was only $16. He has quite a few hip-hoppy videos on it... might be worth a look.

My impetus was the same as yours... not having MTV and wanting to catch up on the aesthetic...

Oh man...why couldn't Duran Duran or Cyndi Lauper have called me? Gulp.

Okay...homework to do. Thanks guys.

Hey, I have a few suggestions because I shot a music video for a girl group a few years ago...dance/hip hop type stuff.

Color is everything nowadays. Here is what I did to create maximum impact with little money..

- Find a great location with lots of angles that are dark. The one I chose was a "storage" place where everyone throws their junk. You know, the places that are orange on the outside? I went in there because it had like 3 floors, all the halls were lined with huge round tubes (aquiducts?), lots of weird colors like orange and red....also, there was TONS of places to put aluminum foil. I took 4 rolls of it and lined everything in sight, so it had this spaceship quailty...and then lite the whole thing. It was cool...looked like a $1,000,000 set...cost me about $50 total.

- Intercut the entire video with different locations that use different settings on your camera. Also, I learned this trick...buy or rent (or borrow) really cheap cameras...like 10 of them. Give them to everyone on set and in the band (or artist). Afterwords in post just shuttle through and you'll pick out some unique shots that people had...and before you give them the camera...give them a mission. Like, tell someone "you get low angles only" then someone you tell.."close ups on people faces only". That way you know you'll have seperate stuff.

Also, I'd do a few insanely different things if you can. Maybe get a lipstick camera and put it on the lead singers head or on the microphone. Anything so when you're in the editing room you have choices.

The last thing is a theme. I chose to have the 2 girls in my video take off in my Jeep down Sunset Blvd...every stop light they picked up people they didn't know until they reached a trendy club. They drove up on the curb all cool...people falling off the sides because so many were crammed on board...they went inside and partied...then later they get kicked out...head down to the beach and infront of a bonfire danced the night away. The Jeep headlights played a part in lighting the beach scene. At the end, everyone was sleeping on the beach while the sun came up.

The beach stuff was intentionally warm...and the driving stuff was normal shooting settings, the industrial setting was metallic like...sorta sharp and hyper reality because of quick shutter speed and lighting. I also sped up the footage in post production.

Oh, by the way...the video was never released. So, feel free to use any of this if you like it.

Good luck my friend...

Murph

Honestly, Dylan makes a good point. Hip-hop videos are so extremely cliche anymore... with the bling bling and the bump bump booty shakin'. Ironically, The Roots made a video a while back that just made fun of the cliches, and it was a great video (I just wish I could remember the song).
Being "out of the loop" could actually serve as an advantage for this video. One trend that also exists in hip-hop videos is being goofy. I'd recommend watching MTV2 for a couple days and write down all the stuff you find strange, interesting, or even stupid about the videos. Then talk to the artist about making a video that takes those cliches to an extreme. Your "old guy" approach would actually provide a great perspective for the production.

The Roots song is called "What They Do"

Watch Space Shower or MTV Japan and then do the opposite to what you see there. Japanese hip hop videos are basically just direct rip-offs of American videos, nothing new nothing original. Try to get the 'talent' into something new, something that is them and not wannabe gangsters. Man good luck, it'll be a battle.

John, go to the local strip club, find every girl you can in a bikini, then find a hugh playboy giant swimming pool, then a booty juice dispensor and you are set.

Hip hop video's are hillerious, i would do a take off , and put all the guys in bikini's and girls in the homie clothes and see what happens.

Zac

Zac,

that'd fly in Australia but certainly not here in Japan. A video that isn't cool and hip would crash like a lead balloon. Cool style is the big seller here in the land of the super consumer.

There is a film called "Fear of a black hat" it is kind of like spinal tap but with rap, and it really mock's the entire industry, really worth checking out.

Adrian, cool is cool, it all depends on what you want to do with the clip, and the available resources. If you want something super dooper cool it may be difficult to do it straight with DV, most likely going to need to find an interesting post production ploy/effect to maintain a sense of individuality.

I saw a great one where they matted the characters from the clip onto 2d backgrounds, like carbourd cutouts and moved them around within the clip, so sometimes they looked normal, then the camera would move and you would see they were paper thin.

Got to find something interesting to do with it.

Zac

Zac,

I hear ya but young Japanese hip audiences don't take the piss very well. Ninety-eight percent of the hip hop videos here are either 'wannbe gangster' sorry 'gangsta', or 'Destiny's Child' copies. Here, look and how you are percieved is everything, it's hard for us Australian's to understand as we for the most don't give a toss what other people think about us. Videos, especially hip hop are the same, if the talent doesn't look cool and like the superstarts they want to be then it won't be popular.

Format can have a lot to do with it as hip hop videos have to look slick and big dollar as that's the image that is sold to the kids here. I'm sure it can be pulled off with DV but it will take a lot of careful planning of lighting and camera movement.

I like the aussie take better (In not giving a toss). Hip Hop music is not my thing but the videos just plain suck. Look at me, I'm a gansta!

Whateva'

Dylan, dawg, that's FOUR videos! (Yo!) All top-shelf choices, especially Tailfeather.

John, here's a few more:

Pass the Courvoisier - Busta Rhymes, P. Diddy, Rah Digga, Pharrell. (with a cameo by Mr. T) The best free ad a liquor company ever got.

Welcome to Atlanta - Ludacris, Jermaine Dupri, P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg. Funnizzle to the maxizzle. "where the playas play...and the pawty don't stop till 8 in the mawnin'"

Without Me - Eminem. You'll laugh your izzass off as he takes on Dick Cheney, Batman, Osama Bin Laden and more.


Hot In Herre - Nelly. "so take off all your clothes" pretty much says it all. Major bootay in this one.

Word, G, gotta jet now back to the heezy fo' sheezy, y'know the crib, my shorty wants to chill with some gin and juice, she get loose. Happy new yizzle. Have fun makin' yo' vidizzle.

I need to stop genralizing. Eminem is cool. I just hate the HH Videos that have:

Ganstas
Shaking Booty (Not a big fan of the BACK) ;)
Large Cribs
Hopping Cars

Those types of videos are more about "Look at me, I'm a bada**" "I am a playa" blah blah blah

It's like, try and be cool without saying "HEY, I am cool". Not only do the songs suck (Poor me, I'm from the hood.......) the videos are always like "I am so cool and a bad mutha".

Doens't anyone want ot be cool and still be humble?

<<<-- Originally posted by John Hudson : I like the aussie take better (In not giving a toss). Hip Hop music is not my thing but the videos just plain suck. Look at me, I'm a gansta!

Whateva' -->>>

Damn dawg, don't be hatin'!


;)

LOL

I'm not hatin' I swear. My opinion is that they just lack creativity and vision. It's like if you've seen one, you've seen them all. I swear I'm not hatin'

:(

i seem to recall a 'sir mixalot' music video i really enjoyed. :P


Zac

I'm not getting down on American hip hop here just the Japanese trend to directly copy the American style. Many American rappers came from the ghettos and that style has always been about girls, cars and cash. John's original question was about suggestions for a Japanese video and I'd really like to see a Japanese hip hop video that shows the problems of Japanese kids, not Japanese kids emulating a lifstyle they have never experienced or no nothing about. Japan doesn't have ghettos like the States, they don't have the social problems bought on by poverty. Japan's problems stem more from social/peer pressure, teenage prostitution and corporate greed. Lets see some of that.

Noble thought, Adrian, but good luck. You already laid out what will sell.

Zac, you are such a booty-hound! :-) I seem to recall that they intermixed shots of large round objects like tomatoes, cantaloupes etc. amongst the booty shots.

"I like big butts and I can not lie
You other brothers can't deny
That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung..."

It's still one of the ultimate party songs (as a DJ I know no better way to get all the bridesmaids out on the dancefloor, plus all the other drunk chicks).

The best hip hop video this year was a throwback to the 1960s.

Yeah Mike I know it's wishful thinking but it's really what Japan needs, a little originality and a big wake up call.

May I suggest the viewing of all the Beastie Boys videos if possible.These are probably the most popular commercial non cliche real hip-hop videos produced. Also 90% of what is commercially broadcast on tv is RAP. Hip-Hop is a worldwide culture and really none of the commercial artists respect, study or have any knowledge of this culture.DJing,MCing,Graffiti and Breakdancing are 4 main components of the Hip-Hop culture. I would first listen to the lyrical content. If the lyrics dont call for a pimp and his ho's then dont go that route.

Matt's on when he recommends the Beastie Boys, them, Run DMC, and Ice T bought rapping into the mainstream and are now the grand-daddies of it all.

Russell Simmons was an incredible visionary to have put these guys on Def Jam, and I believe that early work like the Beasties plus Run-DMC's collaboration with Aerosmith made it possible for Eminem years later to become so huge, and for hip-hop and rap to become so successful with a largely white audience.

I actually met Russell a few years ago in NYC, and his fascinating comments about megatrends in entertainment and consumer goods marketing proved to be uncannily prophetic.

More recently, I had the pleasure of meeting DMC last month, and it was fun reminiscing about his group's tour with Aerosmith and Kid Rock (when Jam Master Jay was still alive).

Without these guys, today's artists wouldn't exist. Which would be too bad, cuz look at all the fun and energy being injected into the music stream by non-pimp'n'ho acts like Black-Eyed Peas (speaking of breakdancing) and Outkast.

As for "what Japan needs, a little originality and a big wake up call," well, aren't they the masters of distilling American culture and feeding it back? But you knew that better than I.