30 Years of Cinematography in Hip Hop

1980s brings..
Slick Rick - "A Children's Story" (1988)

At the top of the 80s, New York rapper Slick Rick debuted his classic hit song A Children's Story. At the time he was signed to the former The Island Def Jam Records, who once also housed artists today such as Kanye West, Jay Z, and Big Sean.


In this video, Slick tells of a story of adolescence turned wrong. Narrating what seems like the misfortune of black youth through the tone of a child's story to his nieces and nephews.

The story sequence is shot in the style of a black and white silent film, with wide gestures of exaggerated body language as was often used in place of dialogue.  The choice of silent film with humorous sped up and large movements help set the tone of it being told as a child's story, despite the grim and graphicness of the content.

While, outside of the story is shot in color to give a sense of "here, and there" or "in character, out of character"

Exactly 10 years later in 1998 we got..
Busta Rhymes - "Gimme Some More" (1998)

Directed by Hype Williams and Busta Rhymes himself, and released under Busta's self founded label Flipmode, Gimme Some More is a beautiful nightmare in Toon World.

The video begins with Busta recalling back to a time when he once bumped his head as a child. The entirety of the video is shot through a fish-eye lens to distort the proportions of the subjects, perhaps to give the perception of a child.

The world that this takes place in is vibrant with eye-popping colors common in children's Saturday morning cartoons.

And most recently,
A$AP Rocky - "L$D"(2015)

After the death of his close friend and founder of A$AP Mob, A$AP Yams, Rocky had been left in a depressive state and his music had taken a more introspective turn. In this music video he searches for emotion through LSD, while lamenting to a girl his inability to be too sentimental.  Rocky is from New York and under the label ASAP Worldwide, founded by A$AP Yams

The music video is decorated in vibrant neon signs in Tokyo, often blurred to capture the feeling of being immersed in a drug trip.

The camera also often tilts, pans away or blurs for a disguised transition into the next scene to convey a continuous one shot. This is done I believe to give effect of all the events melting together as he is under the influence, and thus also allows the audience to synthetically capture the same feeling.