Before R. Kelly unleashed the more grandiose narrative of Trapped in the Closet (or the ambitions of "Sex Planet") on the world, my strongest memory of a Kelly epic was the 1995 video for "Down Low." In the video, Kelly pulls a Pulp Fiction-style betrayal on a mob boss (played by Ronald Isley) and is dragged out into the desert and left for dead:
I mentioned this NPR segment previously, about how music videos changed as they moved steadily from MTV to YouTube. I don’t think that narrative considerations have suffered, although the move to YouTube might suggest that budgets are more modest for videos. Moreover, it’s good to know that you can find videos like "Down Low" on streaming media sites. But I can’t help but feel like something is lost when an R. Kelly masterpiece is crammed into a 340-pixel width.
Anyhow, I told a colleague that mid-’90s hip-hop produced some of the better narrative music video epics—songs that paused to let a story develop, or to let Busta Rhymes headbutt a ram (from the video for "Break Ya Neck"). But I’d like to hear your thoughts about what music videos transformed the medium into something bigger. Leave links below!
And one more before we part:
Dr. Dre and 2Pac transform Oakland into Mad Max in "California Love," circa 1995
Brought to you by the roughly 8-minute video for "Paparazzi."
