Lily Kind

a classic. <3

this is basically still my aesthetic today, haha

The colors! The dancing! Having multiple characters and personas. Some of whom, in Western theater terms, we would call ‘grotesque’ in the classical/positive sense. In addition to the visuals, this song also got me interested in samples. I don’t remember how I figured out that this sample was Anne Peebles but I do remember hunting for the CD at the CD store (probably Newbury Comics). This video has so many cameos, just for the fun of it, to show the love, no verses. Hip hop records always had these goofy skits, remember? I love that sense of silliness as support.

Show me a better dance film. I dare you.

And man she is repping hip hop and black culture so hard. The scenes, outfits, and sounds in this video are both looking back to specific decades and eras in dance history while also projecting into the future, with an emphasis on playfulness and youth. In a time when video choreography was very much a random mix of hip hop styles, she has poppers popping and lockers locking; the song samples 80s classic hip hop as well as a 70s New Orleans inflected jazz funk riff.

So much meaning packed in: In the 70’s hair salon scene, the stylists all have big natural afros. In the fancy dinner scene, her date looks through his glass to compare her to Halle Berry… and then drops dead? Did she poison him? A reference to blues-tradition’s murder-balled? Maybe an amazing claim of her own body positivity? In the next scene, she’s back in her Adidas, out on a city street surrealistically leaning waaaay over to proposition a brother driving by — she’s flanked by a squad of dancers backing it up. She takes such a place of power. In another scene she sits with a dunce cap on in a school classroom, a shrunken mini-Missy. Another scene has what looks like an ad for the Marine’s but with the solider solemnly rapping her lyrics. YESSSSS WOW OH KAY. Long before Dave Chappelle’s Black Klansmen skit, Missy slips into her video a scene of a slave master ‘turning black.’ And the bees!!! The recurring image of Missy scratching records with bees landing on her and everything around her. Pollinate. Queen Bee.

I mean, Weezer was like a whole gender in the 90s, haha. I was too young to know/ understand the specific references here, but I was aware of the weird 50s nostalgia happening in the movies (Grease, That Thing You Do.) I feel like this song and this video, whether intended or not, is a critique of white masculinity in music: both the 50s masculinity being satirized here and also the 90s angsty/ennui kind too that Weezer was adjacent to/ personified? The fact that the whole video commits to the bit so hard is both disturbing and effective. As though the thesis is: the world is so fucked. Here’s this happy sounding catchy sound that’s actually really dark.

This is kind of in a similar category as the Buddy Holly video conceptually: using the music video as a re-make and comment upon a previous nostalgic TV trope. I love how all the dudes in the band play multiple characters here. There’s such fun camera tricks here too. The climax at the end when all the band members kind of explode out of their horror-movie setting and just shred as themselves is so satisfying.

All of the 90s shenanigans in one video. The premise is it’s a cartoon, like Bugs Bunny. The premise is a little kid turns into the villain. The colors. The fish eye. The frames per second manipulation. The mix of crazy sets with empty-white-nowhere sets. Ew. Yuck. So good.

This video still wrecks me. I cry. Shit was so on point. I think I learned what AIDS was from this song? As a kid (and still now) I was struck by the contrast between the paradise-futuristic-tropical water world of their dance scenes against the haunting city life vignettes. Also, at the time the CGI water dancing bodies was pretty wild. But the little shoulder shrug bop they do as a trio was what really hooked me to this music video, and a desire to try and move like them.

I think I learned a lot from this video about both light source and fourth wall. There were a few videos around this time, including the Michael & Janet Jackson’ “Scream” that had a sense of surveillance. And playing with the sense of watching and being watched. Also like Missy and Buster Rhymes, there’s something going on with the frames per second that makes the dance movement look animated.

This video is one handheld shot? I think so! And the premise is they’re a bunch of friends crashing a posh party. So that’s already fun. And has a kind of Singing In The Rain kinda vibe. There aren’t really dance scenes/ choreography in this video but it FEELS like there are, as they hit certain parts of the song with little coordinated shapes. This was a girl group whose whole gimmick was how DIFFERENT they were from each other. To this day when I make ensemble work, I feel like I’m most interested in a cohesive and collective joy that even exaggerates the heterogeneity of the group.

Marionettes? Yes please. And somehow, also, the epitome of cool and sexy and grown (or at least to me when this song came out). The dancers backlit by the cars on the slick paved road, with the white knee pads and black sneakers? Perfection. (And also, at minute 1:33 the dancer on the far left of the screen completely messes up the choreo). If I could be in any music video I think I would want to be one of those powerful women hitting the choreo in slow mo. Also, the sense of time in this video is really lovely. The dance scenes have the sun slowly rising over the course of the video. I love lighting that slowly and consistently shifts like that.

Ay yay yaye. The mix of the black & white with the upside-down? Oof. Also the “Drop” video with the crazy shit in reverse.

Yes. I said it. In addition to this song being awesome, this video is directed by Dave Meyers, who has directed A LOT of iconic music videos — including most of Missy Ellitott’s. He can create whole worlds. But for this video he basically made a mini documentary of a concert. A lot of booty and a LOT of smiling faces of all ages. Most of how Southern rap was being represented on TV and the radio (as I saw it) was Outkast (which also blew my mind). I feel like this video was brilliant for seeing that the best way to represent this song was to was just to go to the song, go to what the song is about, not try to make the song into anything else, not dress it up or change the look or bring in a set or dancers from LA. Just film the party.