Gonna be trippin'
"The highest compliment ever given to me," says Hype Williams,
"is that I have a signature of my own... a look or style that's
replicated or duplicated by others."
Coming toward the end of the commentary tracks on Hype
Williams: The Videos Volume 1, as the director is watching
his hyper-stylized, wondrously strange work for TLC's "No
Scrubs," such an observation might seem disingenuous. Or, it
would, except that throughout his remarks on the 10 videos he's
selected here, Williams has been emphasizing his own commitment
to creativity and innovation in the field he has, essentially,
made over. Since his first music video, in 1994, for the Wu Tang
Clan's "Can It Be All So Simple," he has conjured visual
translations for what he calls the "emotional content" of many
tracks by diverse artists, from Puffy and Missy Elliot to No
Doubt, from Jodeci, Jessica Simpson, and Mary J. Blige, to
Q-Tip, Sisqo, and a Tribe Called Quest.
The Palm Pictures collection (on DVD and VHS) includes "Can It
Be All So Simple," about which Williams recalls, the Wu members
initially "hated this video." Its release, however, changed
everything, setting precedents of performance, color, and
camerawork for any number of "ghetto" or "street" videos that
followed -- artists rapping in a neighborhood and gesturing at
the mostly mobile camera, interacting with one another and
established in a context that corresponded with their lyrics.
It's a smart choice for the first video, as it does capture a
moment, when hiphop videos were concerned to convey a spirit and
an ethos, a sense of place and background, mobility and
restlessness. Williams brings it, all of it.
The DVD includes a cursory biography (widely available
elsewhere): he was born and raised in Hollis, Queens; he
attended Adelphi University in the late 1980s; his first video
effort in 1991 was rejected ("It was a staggering moment and a
great moment at the same time," he recalls, "I walked out of
that office crushed, but knew I wanted to be the best"); he
started his own company, Big Dog Films, in 1993; he hit with Wu
Tang in '94; and made the cult favorite film Belly,
starring friends and collaborators Nas and DMX, in 1998. He's
made commercials for Nike, MasterCard, Revlon, and Fubu, and
made enduring, mutually supportive "familial" relationships with
many of the artists he's come to know. A speedy and enormously
successful career, no doubt. Still, it's disappointing, if
understandable, that he's leaving behind music videos for
feature films and other projects.
I hardly need belabor the many awards Williams has won, but
here's a taste: the 1996 Billboard Music Video Award for Best
Director of the Year; the Jackson Limo Award for Best Rap Video
of the Year in 1996, for Busta Rhymes' "Woo Hah"; the 1997 NAACP
Image Award; the 1998 MTV Video Music Award for Best Rap Video
for Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It," and the 1999 MTV Video
Music Award for Best Group Video for TLC's "No Scrubs." This
collection doesn't include videos with Smith, Brandy (with whom
he made "Sittin' Up In My Room"), or Missy ("The Rain," "She's a
Bitch"), perhaps due to the fact that they have recently
released their own video collections. And, inevitably, important
videos are omitted, for examples, Blackstreet's "No Diggety,"
Dre and Tupac's "California Love," Biggie's "Big Poppa," ODB's
"Shimmy Shimmy Ya," and Foxy Brown's "Gotta Get Me Home." (Maybe
they'll turn up on Volume 2.)
Thankfully, this volume does include the brilliant "Put Your
Hands Where My Eyes Can See," which he made with Rhymes, of whom
he rightly says, "He's more than a talent, he's a phenomenon."
Meanwhile, peep Busta busting all over that fabulous wide-angled
frame: "A lot of niggaz is wonderin' and they furious, / How me
and my niggaz do it, it's so mysterious. / Furious, all of my
niggaz is serious. / Shook niggaz be walkin' around fearin' us!"
Hype doesn't provoke fear or fury so much as awe, even (or
maybe especially?) when he rationalizes Bad Boy's infamous shiny
suits. While you're watching Mase, Puffy, and Chris Tucker jig
and front in Vegas in "Feel So Good," Williams makes a case and
sets a context for those bright green or silver "flashy" outfits
and corny moves. It was "ghetto fabulous," he says, and "if you
were in it, it kind of made sense at the time." (We'll take your
word for it.) He also notes that the pop acts who've blown up
since, Britney and 'NSync and them, they've literally kids
who've come up watching these images, and incorporated them into
their own aesthetic -- yet another sign of rap and hiphop's
cultural predominance.
The DVD offers a brief interview with Williams, but it's hardly
informative. Divided into sections ("Influences," "The Best
Part," etc.), it grants minimal access into Williams' thinking
about his work, his career, or his influences. "There is no
process," he says, "It's almost like every project has an
identity and a life and a starting point of its own." Well,
yeah. He then proceeds to list several kinds of approaches he
takes, talking for hours with the ever-inventive Rhymes, cooking
up his own ideas for acts who don't have any, hashing through
concepts with producers. He feels lucky to be able "to move the
masses with all of these talented people, blessed to be able to
communicate to the world through my camera." This from a man who
initially aspired to be "a Basquiat or Keith Haring," tagging
and painting on the street.
Williams is likewise reticent when it comes to commentary
tracks for videos, too often offering what seem self-evident
annotations: for Nas' extraordinary "Street Dreams," with a
concept based on Scorsese's Casino, he declares, "We were
all really reaching into our creativity, trying to make rap
videos bigger than what they were then"; or for Jay-Z's "Big
Pimpin'," "We were having a good time. Every kind of beach rap
video tries to emulate the kind of energy we have in this video.
" Yes, it does look like "a lot of fun," though he probably
doesn't need to say it three times (it's also too bad that the
audio track is the censored, MTV-okayed track). It would be fun
as well, to hear more about strategies and techniques -- for
"Street Dreams," he begins to talk about the collaboration with
director of photography, Malik Sayeed, the genius who's worked
with Spike Lee (Clockers, Girl 6, He Got
Game) and Ice Cube (Player's Club). Still, Williams
plainly loves his life, his opportunities, his gifts, and
appreciates that he's been "blessed." "You'll have to forgive
me," he sighs at one point, suddenly struck again by the
incredible color experiments and reverse stocks of "Street
Dreams," "I'm gonna be trippin'."
In the end, of course, he's earned it, this moment of trippin'.
Looking back and forward ("It's a young guy's thing," he says,
by way of explaining his own bowing out, though, of course,
there are young girls out there too), he will remain
significant, bringing attention to the directors of music videos
as creative forces unto themselves who must be credited with the
musicians. He's also inspiring because he's raised the bar so
high, so consistently. As influential as other video directors
have been and will be -- David Fincher, Diane Martel, Chris
Robinson, Dave Meyers, Francis Lawrence, Joseph Kahn, Nzingha
Stewart, et. al. -- Williams' "signature" will remain visible
and also shifting, affecting the work of future artists or
stirring them to reach into their own creativity.
The DVD makes that clear enough in the videos themselves: with
so many to choose from, Williams came up with an admirable range
of styles and effects. Notable examples include the remix of
Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear," the black and white, low budget
(at "$20 grand," Williams remarks, it's "almost a joke" by
today's standards) and LL Cool J's "Doin' It" (Williams says
there's an x-rated version floating around somewhere, but the
MTV version is the one collected here, racy enough by MTV
standards). Or R. Kelly's "Half on a Baby," which moves Williams
to say, "Songs are like scripts," which seems painfully
appropriate here, with the sheer scope of this set, with its
towering windows and drapes, and Citizen Kane fireplace,
as well as its flamboyant lament to the artist's "loneliness";
but it all seems a little creepy now. And at last, he
reconsiders Ja Rule's "Holla, Holla," with beach and bikini
scenes set in Rio (and even if you've never been there, he says,
it's "exactly what you see"), and low-rider scenes shot in L.A.
Watching Ja running alongside Irv Gotti's astonishingly vigorous
ride, you might be inclined to disagree with Williams when he
observes that the video "isn't cinematic excellence," but you
can see that it most definitely captures a time, a thrill, a
feeling that suddenly, anything was possible.
And that is what Williams has done, incredibly, again and
again. As he reflects on his opportunities, and the art and
commerce he made of them, his videos trace a kind of timeline
for hiphop, its evolution as art and effect. "The best thing
about hiphop culture," Hype Williams says, "is changing the
world." Amen to that.
— 24 July 2002
