Hip Hop Honors "Tokyo"

Loading...

Sign in or sign up now!
Alert icon
Upgrade to the latest Flash Player for improved playback performance. Upgrade now or more info.
870 views
Loading...
Alert icon
Sign in or sign up now!
Alert icon

Uploaded by on Sep 21, 2009

To promote its 2005 Hip Hop Honors awards special, VH1 commissioned us to produce seven spots featuring some of the genres most influential artists and evoking their contributions to world culture. In each spot, Nas appears in a white environment representing a different world capital and uses an ornate staff to send a golden vein coursing around the portraits and through the space in a symbolic reference to hip hops global reach. Each ad also features a huge portrait by New York-based painter Kehinde Wiley, depicting legends such as Notorious B.I.G., Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, L.L. Cool J, Ice-T, Salt-N-Pepa and Big Daddy Kane.

All the ingredients were already there for us to completely avoid any hip hop cliches: Kehindes paintings seem to be the modern day equivalent of Renaissance portraiture, the golden vine is a rather ancient metaphor, and the cosmopolitan outlook is also not something usually seen. Thanks to those ideas, we were able to create a fresh white visual language that seems like hip hop heaven.

  • likes, 0 dislikes

Link to this comment:

Share to:
see all

All Comments (0)

Sign In or Sign Up now to post a comment!
  • Loading comment...
Loading...

Alert icon
0 / 00Unsaved Playlist Return to active list
    1. Your queue is empty. Add videos to your queue using this button:
      or sign in to load a different list.
    Loading...Loading...Saving...
    • Clear all videos from this list
    • Learn more