"2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted" -- a music video retrospective

I felt something was missing when I covered the "Victory" music video experience. The Puff Daddy/Biggie complex is incomplete until the whole "Rap Wars" saga is touched upon. Even if it ended up on the East Coast, it first began (and peaked) on the Westside.

If you thought Biggie's death and Puffy's rise was the rap story of the 90s, try again. Three words: Death Row Records. The rap from that label did just as much for music as grunge did for white-boy rock 'n roll. The major players and their rise to power is almost Shakespearean. Characters like Suge Knight are just stranger than fiction. Let's face it: West Coast rap is just more interesting.

There are a lot of rap videos from the early- and mid-1990s. But when it came to video making, Death Row  was untouchable. "Nuthin But A 'G' Thang" (even the censored version) is probably the most iconic from that era, but there were so many more. Like Dr. Dre, Snoop and 2Pac always understood the importance of quality videos. For that, their legacy will be sustained.

The video for "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted", the second single from the double album masterpiece All Eyez on Me, is a blueprint for all future rap videos: police harassment, champagne, fine food, fast cars and briefcases full of money.

The uncut version starts with a reference to the November 1994 incident, and lampoons the East Coast in a very incendiary way. One thing you can say about Tupac Shakur is that he had some balls. To me, the rest of the video is somewhat soporific after seeing the prologue, which is hilarious.

Concept: some kind of loose story about 2Pac and Snoop on the run from the LAPD. There's a crime scene and the cops collect some evidence or something. They drive through a police blockade in his convertible. And, for some reason a fax machine sends a detective a promo shot of Tupac, which means he is guilty... Maybe I am taking this video too literally.

There are direct references to 2Pac's jail sentence and Snoop's murder case, but they're both kinda laughing it all off, which is good advice for anyone in legal trouble: make a video about not giving a shit. Could you ever see Puffy making a video like this? No way.

Rapping in a courtroom. I can just imagine a young Ludacris seeing this and getting ideas.

Tupac and his cohorts were so hot in '96. But almost right after the murder, there was a schism in the fellowship. Dr. Dre and Snoop parted and recorded separately, and the rest of the crew just were shattered. Death Row Records without 2Pac, Dre or Snoop was neutered. To this day, Death Row is still milking their 90s revolution with compilations and half-assed DVDs.

Video facts
Length: 5:34
Director: Gobi Rahimi
Date: early to mid-1996
Est. Cost: Unknown

Links
* http://www.mvdbase.com/video.php?id=134
* http://www.mvdbase.com/tech.php?last=gobi


By the way, Tupac: Resurrection is a really epic documentary. I haven't seen the other documentaries about the whole ordeal (Netflix has at least 20 movies about this same thing), but I can guarantee that Resurrection is one of the best.

Prepare to see more Retrospectives on 2Pac, Death Row, NWA, Hype Williams, etc... Maybe I'll set a goal of publishing it before Detox comes out!



To submit ideas for Retrospective articles, or to just chat about the obscure and esoteric, contact me here.

[All images are © their respective owners.]
 

"Victory" -- a music video retrospective

I think what gives Puff Daddy's credibility guise away is his constant need for a new stage name. Endlessly searching for "the cool", he never realizes that the first nickname was what he should have stuck with all along (Sean "Puffy" Combs). What's more, many people don't grasp that most of Diddy's best songs are actually Notorious BIG hits featuring him (and probably also featuring Mase). So, his after-Biggie life has been all about emerging as a separate entity.

Have you seen Bad Boys II? Diddy was trying to sell "Shake Ya Tailfeather" so hard that, as "Executive Music Producer", he played it every possible time he could in the flick. My friends and I based a drinking game on this sobering display of triteness.

OK, to the music video:

With lyrics like "get your math on", "hot for a long time/burning like a candle"; and bragging about going platinum, you know that "Victory" is pop-rap. It's like the Cristal that Puffy is so fond of--bubbly, expensive and not really filling.

It's a basic "Most Dangerous Game"/Running Man take-off. Lots of helicopters, fireballs, rain machines, searchlights, rollerblading cops and supermodels and are employed. It somewhat resembles the directing style of David Fincher. Let's look at a few video stills:

Wait a minute... Year 3002 A.D., and he has a pager? His top speed 320 km PER SECOND??? That's roughly 715 mph... Obviously, the producers were not that worried about the details and the metric system. If they invested more in the little things, and less on Danny DeVito and Dennis Hopper, who knows.

The late Notorious BIG fills in the creative gaps, dominating PD's rhymes posthumously (for the nth time). Even Busta Rhymes makes Puffy sound lazy. When the NWO President (Dennis Hopper) says "delete" (maybe that's how they say it in the year 3002?), I think that just sums up the quality of the video's script.

The lamest part of the video is the apparent suicide of "Contestant #5". The animation of him jumping off the building is just laughable. It reminds me of the Joker's death in Tim Burton's Batman... the same CGI used 10 years later. Why not spend another $30k on some better effects; make it an even 3 million dollar budget?


Video facts
Length: 7:50
Director: Anonymous (Marcus Nispel)
Date: March, 1998
Est. Cost: $2.7 million
http://www.mtvmusic.com/puff_daddy/videos/9718/victory.jhtml

When this video debuted, there was no (living) black artist as high profile as Puff Daddy. With Biggie's death, he catapulted into the mainstream, with the help of MTV. The video for "Victory" is Puff Daddy's parallel of "Estranged" by Guns N' Roses: it marks the pinnacle of overindulgence and the waning of popularity. Maybe Diddy's next album will be analogous to Chinese Democracy. "Estranged" is a classic... is "Victory"?


Links
* http://www.mvdbase.com/video.php?id=22637

To submit ideas for Retrospective articles, or to just chat about the obscure and esoteric, contact me here.

[All images are © their respective owners.]