Today’s video battle pits two newcomers against the undisputed king of Hip-Hop videos. Not that Busta Rhymes has released the most videos in the game. But his clips are consistently visually groundbreaking and captivating. So let’s see how his latest joint holds up against freshmen Big Sean and Kid Cudi.
BUSTA RHYMES – “MAKE THE WORLD GO ROUND” feat. ESTELLE
For the video to his fourth single off of Back On My B.S., Bussa Buss tapped filmmaker Jason Goldwatch, whose past video credits includes work with a variety of artists from 88-Keys to Young Jeezy. For “Make The World Go Round” the two created an interesting landscape of foreign magazine pages that provides as futuristic a look for the clip as the Jelly Roll-produced track it represents. You find Busta and Estelle dancing and having a genuinely good time across several layouts, as the song’s lyrics pop up in English and Japanese, Russian, and Portuguese alternatively. The cool aspect works so long as you don’t know what the foreign writing says. However, if you do happen to speak either of these languages, you’ll find yourself looking for errors in spelling, grammar and translation instead… and most likely find them.
BIG SEAN – “GETCHA SOME”
Def Jam artist/Kanye protégé Big Sean brought Hype Williams fish lens out of retirement to bring this older mixtape cut back to life. The clip offers a pretty dope combination of hand-drawn animation – sorta like what Kanye brought us with the “Good Life” video – and some of the visual techniques that made Hype THE go-to Hip-Hop video guy in the late 90s. The result fits the song perfectly, especially once you get past Sean’s “this is my first video” eyes. You can almost tell the parts of the clip when the artist was most comfortable: the shopping scenes, which is very fitting, considering the song is an ode to Big Sean’s fashion addiction. Add in the Kanye West cameo and the bright 80s-inspired color scheme, balances by some more subdued tones in the animation, and you have almost exactly what you would have pictured this song to look like, if you’re one of those “seeing sounds” types.
KID CUDI – “MAKE HER SAY” feat KANYE WEST & COMMON
We brought in a slightly older contender to challenge this battle for eclectic visual supremacy. Kid Cudi’s approach to the “Make Her Say” video is a little different then our first two contenders in that it is one of those videos that does its best not to distract the viewer from the song itself. It’s an exercise in minimalism: subdued stark lighting, dull colors, and no plot to speak of really. Cudi’s clip also stands out in that he took it out of the studio. Shot in New York and LA, the video cleverly hides the fact that he and his fellow G.O.O.D. Musicians each filmed their scenes separately. Director Nez Khammal managed to find locations in NY that would aesthetically match the L.A. poolside look he captured with Kanye to create a video that isn’t lost to the landscape of either city. With the split screen, upside down shots, and random artsy positioning of the one video chick, “Make Her Say” almost looks like a clever short-film inspired by the song.
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