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Retirement is not permanent. Not in boxing. Not in entertainment – especially not in the rap game. Anyone who was surprised that Jay-Z released his “Kingdom Come” comeback CD after “quitting” to head up Def Jam, well, Kanye and Fiddy have a bridge they wanna sell you.

However, I was surprised to hear recently that Jay-Z has another album coming out – less than a year after his last one. I first heard the news, and I kind of groaned a little bit – we all know what can happen when a comeback is hurried into the marketplace before the audience is actually hungry for it.

I had heard nothing about this until a piece came out in the NYT about Jay-Z’s new record and its ties to the upcoming American Gangster macho Oscar bait from Ridley Scott. Apparently the whole album is “inspired” by the Russell Crowe – Denzel Washington scenery chew-fest.

“It immediately clicked with me,” said Jay-Z, who has made passing references to gangster movies in previous recordings but has never delved so deeply into the genre. “Like ‘Scarface,’ or any one of those films, you take the good out of it, and you can see it as an inspiring film.” – NYT

So far, none of this sounds good to me. It’s too soon, the album seems to be shackled to a film which makes it more of a marketing piece than inspired creation. And of course, Jigga’s last music was very underwhelming.

And I was also troubled by the over the top look of the videos for Kingdom Come. Sure Jay looked amazing selling Budweiser in that Monaco Tourism Board spot – but was that what we wanted from Hova? Most people passed on Kingdom Come, which made me question even more the motives for Jay’s quick come-back. All signs pointed to a bloated, ego-fueled disaster … then I saw ...

The clip for “Blue Magic” – all stripped back menace and desolate urban drug rhymes. This is Jay out coke-ing the Clipse – as raw and real a record as Jay has made in years (ever?). My fears went out the window – at least for this first song. This is the b/w intensity of “99 Problems” with the late-night, broken-glass beats that first got Pharrell noticed. Hell, Jay's not even in the damn vid.

The video has been added and pulled all over the web. Anyone who has a stable link should send it along to me. But you should def watch the video - my rambling will make more sense. Try onsmash or YouToogle.

Read the NYT interview and you can see that Jay seems really amped up by the movie that the album is inspired by. Jay has spent a few years being professionally non-plussed so that kind of fire seems like a good thing.

The clip – directed by Rik Cordero – feels like an episode of “The Wire” come to life with a million and one things sure to make MTV/BET nervous (but watch them still play it anyway – it is JAY after all). This video (or “trailer” ?!?) is all the things that “Show Me” was not – and that is a good thing.

Jay has been a lot of things, but he must have realized that “self-satisfied mogul" is not a persona that we are too interested in. Bigger is not necessarily better. This first track off American Gangster heads in a new direction and the video (assuming this is the “real” video for the track) is spot on perfect for the music.

All in all, “Blue Magic” seems like the perfect comeback video – and Jay (label prez and artist) didn’t have to pay a million bucks for it either.


Update - over on antville, spit posted this link to photos from Pharrell's blog. These images apparently show the "real" video shoot being directed by Hype. Sigh. My enthusiasm is waning as I see the glossy cars and flashing light sets. Who knows if this glossy stuff will be intercut with the b/w drug stuff or if this trailer is really just a teaser to up the street cred.

Labels: jay-z, label, music video, philosophy, review, selling, video link, YouTube

There are two new music videos that borrow from a recent ad campaign. This is not unusual since TV commercials rank just behind feature films as the main “inspirations” for music videos. The unusual part is that both these new MVs are biting the very same advertisement …

The HP “Making Computers Personal Again” spots. There are lots of commercials in this campaign – including snowboarder Shaun White, Pharrell and Hova his own self. These are good commercials and there is nothing wrong with borrowing from the ad-world to MVs, but these HP spots happen to be terrible starting points for music videos.

The music videos in question are Talib Kweli “Hot Thang” and Fam-Lay “Beeper” featuring Pharrell. Besides the fact the idea has already been visited before by one of the guest artists, or the fact that neither of these clips is done with the same precision (nor budget) as the originals there is another reason why these are not good concepts for music videos …

They don’t show the damn face of the artist!!!

I repeat, you might wanna show the face of the artist rather than hiding it just out of frame. Talib is a talented guy who has never had the mainstream (i.e. non-backpack) success of Common or Mos Def – so we need to see his damn mug. Fam-Lay is someone that audiences have never, ever heard of – unless you live in Virginia, perhaps. These artists need to be seen so we can identify with them and build their careers.

So this idea isn't working for the B-list, but I originally thought that the HP “seen from the neck down” idea might work for an ultra-famous artist who we instantly recognize by voice and force of personality. Maybe someone like Will Smith or Busta Rhymes or Bono could pull it off. But then it occurred to me - none of those artists would want to be seen as grabbing the shirt-tales of Jay-Z. Anyone famous enough to “work” in a headless, HP-copying music video – is too famous to be in any spot that replicates the success of a more/equally famous artist.

And on top of that, the HP ads are NOT promoting Jay-Z or Shaun White or Mark Cuban – they are promoting the HP laptops. The cool-ness of the hip performers is supposed to rub off onto the staid Hewlett Packard laptops – make them as cool and youthful as the MacBooks.

The fact that older viewers of the HP spots might not (ok, definitely won’t) recognize the torsos of Jigga or Skateboard P is a PLUS! It makes the HP seem cool while still showing off the capabilities of the devices. It doesn’t matter if viewers of the commercials could shout out the name of the stars the second they saw the Adam’s Apple of Sean Carter or the Flying Tomato – they aren’t SELLING the person, they are selling the computer that the person is talking about. However, the fact that viewers cannot ID Talib Kweli or Fam-Lay by their hand motions IS a big negative and should have been obvious before things got rolling.

When these jobs were getting commissioned the mental association for the artists with a big, mainstream advertising campaign must have looked like a good thing. What label doesn’t want to see their artist as a brand name?

The YouToogle clips of the HP spots no doubt made it much easier for the directors to sell these ideas to the labels and management. A headless person (insert artist's name here) creating a stadium out of the air is a great pitch for a music video. Just not a great music video.

Labels: jay-z, music video, philosophy, video link, YouTube

Directorial Style

Developing a distinct style as a music video director can be tough to pull off in the marketplace – with the realities of satisfying the desires of labels, managers, artists and product placers making a director’s reel jump around like Everlast.

Do directors WANT to develop a distinct style to call their own? Should they? I don’t think there is one answer to that.

Directors with a specific, easily recognizable style often get more props from the aueterist camp. Guys like Spike and Gondry have obvious things that connect their clips together. Does that visual cohesive-ness make them better directors than someone with a more eclectic filmography? I don’t think so.

Chris Cunningham has done some really cool videos, but I would rather not spend more than a few minutes at a time in the unrelentingly depressive world of techno-doom that Cunningham creates. Maybe Cunningham only likes the kind of song that calls for visual misanthropy, but I get creeped out and need to open the window after just a few minutes. Maybe that is the point – but does that make him a “good” director? BTW – In my eyes, Cunningham is a very good director, but on my own personal scorecard I take points OFF for the same-ness of their tone, rather than considering the Infini-Dread vibe a plus.

In my opinion, music videos are a craft that serve a lot of masters and the same-ness or unity of a director’s output has little to do with how they should be judged.

Hip-Hop videos have lots of the same things in them – cars, girls, shiny things – but then again so do the songs the clips are promoting. Many folks see nothing of value in urban videos because of this. Okay, but how is the output of Cunningham (or Gondry) exempted from the “same=bad” judgment?

When Dave Meyers was rulling the MV world a few years back, people were hiring him as much to get his name stamped at the front of the clip (and his entertaining presence on the “making of” show) as to get his skills behind the camera. But Meyers always delivered something really distinct. Meyers had a certain color transfer look and he was always great at getting fun, comfortable confident performances out of the artists (something recently noted here). This allowed Meyers to shoot videos for Jay-Z, NSync, Pink, Celine Dion and Aerosmith – the kind of varied client list most directors can only dream of. Meyers was also able to photograph a lot of the “same” stuff over and over again – people getting out of cars in slow motion and girls dancing in formation with a style that kept it feeling fresh, even if I had just seen another Meyers video with the same elements two minutes earlier on MTV. Kids, MTV is a TV channel that used to show music videos – oh, never mind.

Meyers was always interested in getting the job (or at least he must have been since he got 92% of the jobs from '99 to '01). If the label wanted dancing and car shots (which they usually do), Meyers delivered dancing and car shots, but with his own, unique spin – just like a true professional. His videos sold records and they all were completely watchable. Could Meyers have put his foot down and said “No more dancing”? Sure. Then, the labels would have passed the work on to Kahn or X. Instead, Meyers injected a lot of his own personal style into the framework of a major label video.

Chris Milk is a young director, who seems to be going in a different direction. I really admire Milk’s output and his stuff has a certain twisted classicism – but other than that his videos seem pretty varied. And rare.

Milk has managed to craft a career where he seems to not do the kind of clips that everyone else is. That certainly cuts down on the number of jobs Milk is up for, since I doubt Rihanna and Chris Brown want burning crosses or weed-whacking Jon-Benets in their clips. I’m sure Milk is fine with that, but it does shorten his filmography.

The best way to create a singular voice is for a director to simply take less jobs. Ignore the label briefs that call for the kind of close-ups or flattering camera angles you don’t want to shoot. I would imagine that guys like Paul Fedor and Milk simply write the treatment they want to shoot – if and only if they are feeling the song. On the flip-side, some directors are busy working with commissioner to write (and re-write) the kind of concept that will book them the job, something that is sure to enhance their chances of employment, but also make the finished product something that is sure to be judged as far less “visionary.”

Maybe THAT is the real determinant of music video director style. Not the framing, or lens selection or art-direction choices, but rather how many jobs he/she takes. How many songs a director wants to write on and how eagerly he/she crafts the concept to meet the brief from the label might be the real reflection of a director’s personal style. In a collaborative medium like music videos, style is where-ever you can grab it.

Labels: aerosmith, baby director, Chris Brown, jay-z, label, music video, NSync, philosophy, pink, Rihanna

Euros love the desert. Especially those Commonwealth types from England, Ireland and Welsh-land. The love them some videos in the desert, probably because their local “warm vacation spot” is Brighton.

Every Continental director (and most of the artists) I have worked with has really, really wanted to shoot in the desert outside of LA. They all feel that the song in question (no matter what it is) just sounds like the wide open spaces of the America Southwest. My guess, is that the desert is something they don’t have back home, so when they come here – they think it is a great inspiration to drag the camera crew out to the Mojave, or if you are on a tighter budget, Vasquez Rocks.

It is a cliché in LA-based production circles that if the crew is driving out to the desert in the pre-dawn hours – someone important on the job must have an accent. That is not to say that American artists are immune to the charms of the desert, but it seems to have a special draw to those from across the pond.

I started on a list, but ran out of inspiration. Maybe commenters can add in their suggestions for Euros in the desert videos. The Spice Girls were super-heroines in the desert, Radiohead was quirky, the Lighthouse Family was imminently forgettable and so on. The music actually does point to clips from Sting and the Clash being shot in the desert. U2 used an artificial desert, so that only kind of counts, but they did have that whole album called Joshua Tree. Alanis is Canadian, so she kind of counts. I know I must forgetting a ton of the, Surely Westlife and Robbie Williams have shot videos in the desert.

Of course the flip-side of this is the goofy stuff that US directors and artists always wanna shoot in Europe. Jay-Z had his recent “Hey look at me, I’m in Monaco. No really. Monaco. Check me out” moment for his unretirement. If you were in Paris, where should you shoot your video? Why right in front of the Eiffel Tower, just like Mariah and Usher.

What seems “new and exciting” to the person making the trans-Atlantic flight is guaranteed to make the locals roll their eyes and say “We have to get ANOTHER permit for there.”

Labels: celebrity, jay-z, mariah carey, music video, on the set, robbiew williams, sting, u2, usher, video link, westlife