I was writing this post and I saw that Obtusity had already done his thing. Here are my thoughts as well as the ‘Tus’s more scholary insight.

         

thanks for posting this 30f. and also great analysis on obtusity. it's a strong video and like tusy mentions it's an especially good video for hip-hop (given the recent spate) but that's what you get when you put out a song that talks about something other than your incredible personal wealth and the debatable moral character of your women or the maximum potential augmentation of your rims vis-a-vis the always constraining proportions of your wheel well.

Sure, music sales are dying under the old guard but music is very much alive it's just more niche and I think that this somewhat painful change over will benefit hip-hop the most as the genre will be forced to re-evaluate its raison d'etre; an action which will no doubt result in more introspective or at least meaningful music (like ludacris' slap).

god speed hip-hop, god speed!

         

This video works? No sir!

In fact, it not only feels like another cheap hip hop movie video (Irv Gotti anyone?) but the I NEED MUSIC and ARE YOU TALKING TO ME segues are downright embarrassing.

This is misses the TD boat and so obviously so. Luda neithers fits the role nor does the track even mimic (in the slightest degree obtusity!) anything remotely hermann. This one's a no.

         

well lusk i didn't mean to imply that the track mimics hermann's score, it sounds nothing like it, just that the music in "slap" works with the themes sort of like hermann's worked with the themes of taxi driver - i.e. it attempts to create a sense of paranoia and excitement.

i think the same goes for the video in general, it isn't just trying to mimic the original film - but uses its images and themes to say something new. which at least separates it from the rampant gangsta film referencing we usually see.

         

OBTUSITY: You're right, the video isn't TRYING to mimic the original film, it's cheaply (and in very uninteresting ways) generally copying the piece's visual motifs (kinda). Note: amazing too how clunky the president bush scene is. Bickle at the tv is racially charged. Political yes, but not politically. Here it is treated dead on and obvious in an obviously hamfisted way.

Hermann's score acts as the voice of one of the film's primary characters, New York City. It looms and taunts, broods with a kind of billowing implosiveness, spills over itself in jazzy love, sustains warning and caution - even post climax, is mystically summoning and ingesting its own past lives. Luda's track realistically sounds like 4 tired bars that kinda suggest night time.

I really dig your blog. And I understand why we'd want to applaud anything in modern hiphop that deviates (even in the slightest bit) from its self created modes.

But this video is really poor. At best, an embarrassing posture.

Taxi Driver should have been the platform for a dialogue ABOUT a video. Not the vehicle this promo poorly rides. NAS' "If I Ruled The World" is a great example for how this could be done.

         

i agree with most everything you said, but i'd still argue that regardless of how poorly some of the concepts play out, the idea of using travis bickle (the lonely/angry taxi driver) as a metaphor for exploring ludacris's frustrations with society, himself and hip-hop (even if his observations aren't all that deep or poetic) is a good one - for me it still works as a revelatory look at the song and its subject matter.

         

Never seen the movie - only thing I can add is that, in music video, the laws of feature films don't always apply - but the vid's pretty good for a hiphop vid. The DP/directorial work bests Doe Boy Fresh, for sure, but can't beat Who Cares?

         

         

ludacris mov