from the LP When Disaster Strikes…, Elektra Records, 1997Remember when MTV actually played music videos…? I know, that’s an overused quandary by people my age these days, but damn---the ignorant-ass shit that channel is laying on the youth of today has got to be a hundred times worse for them than even the edgiest or most unabashedly lewd music videos from back in the ‘80s & ‘90s. Although, that was an era when being a “music video director” still came with a lot of cachet if you did it well (not to mention money…), and the video for this eternally slammin’ cut from Busta is a perfect example. Director Hype Williams basically made his name in music videos, this one being among his finest; essentially a redux of Coming to America, the whole vibe of this track was magnified several times thanks to Williams’ psychedelic & surreal directorial vision (those tribal day-glo warriors sealed the deal for me). This song also happens to be the joint, with that Timbaland-inspired beat which never losses its freshness, and Busta’s ridiculously hot rhymes, “…hit you with the shit make you feel it all in your toes, hot shit got all you niggas in wet clothes; stylin my metaphors when I formulate my flows, if you don't know you're fuckin with lyrical player pros…” Word.
