The history of Music Videos - Hip Hop By Edgar Kyenkungu Date: 9th September 2011

The beginning - 60’s The very first worldwide music video was in 1964, starring the famous ‘The Beatles’. It originally was a motion picture mock documentary directed by Richard Lester (A hard day’s night) that happened to feature musical sequences which would then be used as template models for future music videos. The Beatles then went on to star in another musical sequence comedy film directed again by Richard Lester (Help!) filmed in London and in color.This helped the The Beatles set the standards for ‘music videos’, allowing them to start creating their own promotional clips that would be used to promote their records even further.

The breaking entrance - 70’s-80’s In 1985 Run DMC made a great impact on the hip hop world as well as the popular culture by being the first hip hop/rap group to be featured on MTV since it was launched in 1981. This was seen as an important milestone in the music world as it changed the way hip hop and african/american culture was seen throughout the whole world, thus kick starting their career. Although Run DMC were the revolutionizers, they weren’t the first hip hop/rap group to create a music video. That title was taken by Malcolm McLaren, Worlds Famous Supreme Team and Rocksteady crew with the famous music video “Buffalo Gals”, introducing hip hop to the United Kingdom for the first time ever. The reason as to why this video was so revolutionary was because it showcased the main aspects of the hip hop culture: Rapping, DJ scratching, Graffiti and break-dancing

Mainstream directing - 90’s During the 1990’s, hip hop was beginning to gain more listeners throughout the world, causing the genre/culture to hit mainstream with the help of innovative directors, ‘appealing’ music videos and meaningful lyrics.A prime example of this would be the hip hop group “A tribe called quest” and their bold music video ‘Scenario’.This music video gave viewers the impression it being interactive, setting it apart from the rest with a sense of uniqueness that many of groups didn’t have. The success of the video mainly came from the skillful director Jim Swaffield who eventually went on to direct for many artists such as Coolio, KRS-ONE and R.Kelly. Evidently the 90’s were career kick-starting careers for many directors as many artists needed a good director who would showcase their talents and messages, thus increasing their fan base whilst allowing artists to express themselves culturally.

Global Growth - 2000’s The 2000’s were successful years for technology as well as music/videos on the whole in terms of overall global growth.Kickstarting this exponential growth was the introduction of DVD ( Digital Versatile Disk) in 2002, allowing music videos to be formatted onto these disks, resulting in even further promotion for the artists product. In 2005 the popular iTunes was released to the public with full compatibility, changing the way people listened to music/videos forever as such media was available to be downloaded by anyone which would essentially boost circulation/sale figures, for a fee of course. In the same year Youtube and Myspace TV were also launched, allowing music videos to be viewed online 24/7 by anyone globally for free.These two websites alone helped new artists such as Soulja Boy gain further popularity since Myspace users were able to embed youtube videos onto their profiles for anyone to see.

Distribution Before the 2000‘s specifically the 1970‘s , music videos were typically distributed via VHS (Video Home System) which allowed consumers to watch their favorite music videos right at home, or wherever there was a video player. Following on from this was the VCD ( Video CD), a CD made to withhold videos of a maximum of 70 minutes for viewing pleasure. This was a big step in distribution as the VCD was much more durable.

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