For many hip-hop heads the golden-era of hip-hop was during the '80s-'90s. For those of you who believe that is true, you might enjoy NPR's "The Record". Every other Friday they are looking at some of the first hip-hop music videos, which were played on a TV show called "Video Music Box". "Video Music Box" was created back in 1984, and was the first show to document hip-hop music and culture (and it's still on today!). The show was created and hosted by a man named Ralph McDaniels. McDaniels was involved in the making of a lot of hip-hop videos back then and worked with a lot of the artists. For NPR's "The Record", he will break down and discuss a different music video every other Friday. The first one up is Big Daddy Kane's 1988 hit, "Aint No Half-Steppin".
Check out the video and some of what McDaniels had to say on it below.
On the video location & clothing:
"We shot this video in the Puck Building on Lafayette street. A lot of videos were shot at that particular time in that building. The whole idea was to compare hip-hop to a sport, and in this case it was boxing and it was cards. The whole idea is that it's a game and Kane is the champion — he's the Muhammad Ali of hip-hop. You can't beat him.
When [Kane] first came on the scene he was wearing fatigues and Timberlands. People wanted him to stay that type of guy, but he never wanted to be your typical rapper. Kane didn't wanna be typical anything. Kane would get fancy suits, button-down shirts and outfits from Dapper Dan, which was the designer of choice at that particular time."
On Kane's dancing:
"The thing is, with Kane, he did things that you didn't expect. There was no guy that was talking that hardcore that was dancing; it just didn't make sense to everybody, like, 'He's too hardcore to dance.' But he understood the entertainment factor of it, and I believe that he liked to dance. He's like your uncle at a party — he loves to dance."
On the other actors in the video:
"In this video Kane is playing cards with a known thug from Brooklyn. He was down with the Juice Crew, but when he wasn't doing videos he could probably stick you up somewhere. It was important sometimes — and still is — to have a known thug in your video — I'm sure Lil Wayne has 'em in his videos and Chris Brown probably has one. It's like, 'That guy is a real thug right there. So if Chris Brown is hanging out with him, or if Kane's hanging out with him, we better back off.'
It's all about impressing the girls. It's all for the women, at the end of the day. To be honest with you. At least back then, it was all about, 'I want to impress this woman, so look, I've got Mike Tyson with me.' Mike Tyson's going, 'You see Kane is right here! Kane is here.' It's all the same."
You can check out the entire interview here.