Special: Hip-Hop Videos of the 90s, Volume 1

Starting today, continuing periodically, and ending whenever I run out of gas, I'll be sharing something I've held private for a very long time: My love for 1990s hip-hop videos.

Most people don't know this, but Flavor Flav was a sex symbol and fashion icon long before The Surreal Life and Flavor of Love. His previous career as a rapper is, of course, dwarfed by his modern achievements on VH1's reality repertoire, but he has nevertheless been extremely influential as the musical genius flanking Chuck D in Public Enemy. Flav and D, along with Terminator and Richard "Professor Griff" Griffin, assembled a supergroup which, James Lipton would agree, by comparison reduces the collective works of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart to childish rubber-band plunkings.

Today I present you with something not aptly described by "masterpiece," as it is so much more, Public Enemy's "Give it Up."


The things I love about this video:
-The earth shattering special effects, and the seemless California-Raisin-ish claymation.
-Pretty much everything Flavor Flav does, especially wearing a rain-coat in the sunshine.
-The brief parodies of gangsta videos and suburban rap
-The ability of the ever-watchful benevolent Public Enemy to rescue a child from an evil dude in a mask, and the positive message of the kid rejecting a 40 of Malt Liquor. Then, the evil dudes turn into books.
-Claymation Bill Clinton, dollar signs in his eyes, physically impeached by Public Enemy via yanking from the lid of the US Capitol Building.
-Rappers playing chess in the park
-The complete absence of rap vide-hos.