Back To The Future

Many of you may not be old enough to remember that days before the commercialism of Hip-Hop videos. Many of you were born into the Bling-Bling / Ghetto Fabulous era of hip-hop videos and completely missed the golden age of hip-hop videos, when they were raw, real and straight from the streets.

On this week’s edition of Back To The Future, we are spotlighting one of my personal favorites "Aint No Future In Yo Frontin'" by MC Breed. This video was originally released back in 1991 before there were video hoes, before rappers was renting cars out (on the labels dime) for their videos and before mutha fuckas was shooting videos with a whole bunch of niggas and bitches they don't even know.

Back in those days they shot the videos in their own neighborhoods with they real partnas and hoes dancing in the videos that probably just happened to be in the hood at the time of the shoot. But more than anything else niggas were riding around in cars and rockin' jewelry they actually owned.

Back then they weren’t rapping about the hood and then hoppin’ on a jet and heading back to their mansion in rural Connecticut (Curtis). They were rappin' about the block and then when the video was over is back to the block. Nowadays rappers are talking tougher then ever and living up to less and less of it. Simply juxtaposing this video with today's rap videos is eye opening in itself.

In Joe Budden's song "Who", he explained the paradox that is todays Hip-Hop videos well:

Honestly I aint know what to think,
A few years ago we had the young kids wearing pink,
I don’t blame them for not knowing a damn thang,
we trained them to be this way.
Training them whatever to sell with no limits,
Since the early 90s sold them a false image,
so when some shit come that don’t fit the mold,
it’s like mole, nigga you wont even go gold.
They watch the videos see you on the corner with a whole bunch of people and think that you hood,
they turn on the TV and see these video bitches and think that niggas girls really look that good
I mean some of them are fooled so easily
by whatever we say or we show em on TV