Every so often, someone or something comes along in the music business that influences the accepted way of doing things, and right now in hip-hop there are four primary sources that are breaking down the norms: Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne, T-Pain (and the Auto-Tune sound), and Rik Cordero. While the former three names have become synonymous with mainstream popularity, the latter name is equally important to the genre, most notably in the underground scene.
Watching a hip-hop music video from director Rik Cordero is like viewing the cinematic work of great auteurs like Spike Lee, Quentin Taratino, or Martin Scorsese. The videos he produces capture a certain mood and feeling that is singular to only his directorial style. Rik Cordero’s artistic vision behind the camera has made him as valuable to the independent community as Hype Williams is to the majors.
Although Rik Cordero has contributed greatly to the careers of many up-and-coming artists, hip-hop’s big dogs often call on him for his services too. Some of the names include: Busta Rhymes (“Arab Money”), Q-Tip (“Move”), Nas (“Be A N——R Too,” “Sly Fox”), Snoop Dogg (“Neva Have 2 Worry”), The Roots (“75 Bars: Black’s Reconstruction,” “Get Busy,” “Birthday Girl,” and “Rising Up”), Jay-Z (“Blue Magic” trailer), Ghostface Killah (“The Barrel Brothers”) and many others.
A&R Department caught up with Rik Cordero to discuss the music video as an art form, his contribution to hip-hop as a director, and his involvement in the most recent projects of Jay-Z and Nas.
When did you break into directing urban music videos?
I think I got my start with—one of my first kinda hip-hop videos with Ali Vegas, who was an artist from Queens—underground artist who had a big buzz and was signed to Columbia a long time ago. And then that kinda led to a couple of other independents around the area: this kid James Watts from Jersey, and then from there it was Joell Ortiz, which was kinda the first video that really got a lot of attention, which was “Brooklyn Bullsh——t.” And that was when Joell’s album first dropped, and you know it kinda took off from there.
As the creative force behind a video, what is your main objective as the director of the music video?
As a director I think I’m pretty much always at service to the treatment and the concept. So everything kinda revolves around what the concept is and getting to that—getting from point A to point B. So that’s really the first thing that I have to approach when doing a video. And then secondly, it’s finding the emotional connection to the audience through the artists. The reason why a lot of artists are successful is because they can make that emotional connection through their music, so our job is to do that the same way but with a visual medium. So there has to be … the artists kinda has to be true to themselves when they shoot, as well as us being true to them and true to ourselves in creating something that people will watch and make an emotional connection. It’s easy to kinda like—there’s a lot of videos that, it’s a lot of quick imagery, a lot of cuts, cool performance shots but you don’t really remember anything significant about those kinds of videos. It’s just a lot of like smoke-and-mirrors. So with the videos that we do, we’re more interested in telling stories—more than, “alright, we’re going to do 10 shots of the artist performing the song in different locations with different lights—it’s boring to us. It’s more interesting to put an artist in the storyline because that’s something that is very human, people can easily connect to a story and ground with in reality. But we put as much effort and time into that as the guys who just do strictly performance shots.
You provided the first visual to Jay-Z’s “Blue Magic” video from the highly anticipated “American Gangster” album. It seemed like that was your formal introduction to viewers as a video director for urban acts. How did your participation with that video impact you as a video director?
Yeah, I think it’s interesting because we’ve been doing it for quite some time before the “Blue Magic” trailer through the internet and what not. I think what that did was it really—with an artist like Jay-Z and his caliber, and kind of endorsing something that was really mainly distributed through the internet, it really had this gritty storyline, something that was done that didn’t look like it was contrived and commercialized. So it did a couple of things: it really made the internet video something that was significant to promote an album because he endorsed it. He made it … for us I guess it was kinda like a formal introduction to the industry, but it wasn’t anything different than what we usually do at Three 21 Films.
What do you think it is about your video style that makes you such an in demand director from many of urban music’s most celebrated artists?
I think a lot of these artists, a lot of the legends, I think Questlove said it best; I read in an interview that he said: “he [Rik Codero] doesn’t go into our videos thinking that it’s going to be like this “Gone with the Wind” production. That means that there isn’t like this huge set with all these bells and whistles with a bunch of people who are just … not really doing anything—we get right to the heart of what the idea is. We’re not concerned with all of the bells and whistles just because they exist—we’re concerned with the storyline and making that feel real for the audience. And like I said the music video as an art form isn’t that old, it’s about 30 years old; and music and paintings are art forms that have been around for centuries but you don’t base the quality of a song on a budget. You don’t hear a song and think that they needed a big budget to make that song—you just make an emotional connection to it. And I feel like that’s the same thing with these music videos. We were just conditioned for so long that the hip-hop music video required these big budgets because that’s all everyone was seeing. They were just seeing these videos that were very hollow. They looked great and it’s cool but you don’t really step away from anything other than they spent a lot of money on the video.
[Ed. Note: After Rik finished his comment, I mentioned that earlier hip-hop videos didn’t require such large budgets but were still memorable.]
Back then it was the music. It was amazing just to see a rapper rapping in front of the camera because it was new—it was in your face. It was something different, and we wanted it. Everyone wanted to see what these rappers looked like. And I think … I don’t want to say we’re bringing it back to that but I think it’s a balance. I think … every artist has—from the most mainstream artist to the underground—they have these personal records that their labels won’t necessarily support because it isn’t a mainstream kind of thing, and it’s not something that … it wouldn’t be a song that would sell a lot of ringtones or something like that but they’re personal songs. And those are the kinds of things that we get offered to do. Songs that some other people would be afraid to do because it’s not a BET or MTV friendly video. But again that’s not … like I said, we do it because it’s an art form to us. We don’t set out to say, “ok, this is going to be a MTV video” or “this is going to be a strictly internet video.” We go out there and we make the best video that we can make with whatever resources we have. And I think a lot of these artists respect that—you know, the Nases, the Roots, Snoop Doggs, Jay-Zs—real artists. These are guys who are fortunate enough to have been there and done that, so to speak. They’re looking for something new. Some of the newer artists have not been there where they can just spend $500,000 on a big video. So they never … they may want it, but that’s not what we do really. I just feel like every artist has this personal song that they do and that’s the kinds of things that we’re interested in. The labels aren’t throwing us the songs that people can dance to. It’s ok. This is our lane.
…there’s a lot of videos that, it’s a lot of quick imagery, a lot of cuts, cool performance shots but you don’t really remember anything significant about those kinds of videos. It’s just a lot of like smoke-and-mirrors. So with the videos that we do, we’re more interested in telling stories.
Not only does your company provide the visual product for artists, but it seems that you also promote the video as well. Since your job is to create the image for the music, why do you assist in promoting the video when that’s really the label’s job?
Cause the labels don’t really know what to do with some of these videos on the internet. I don’t think they’re as in tune with the bloggers, and a lot of the websites, and the fans who are online. They just assume that you could put it out and it’s up to the artists’ name to really generate the kind of promotion, and that’s not always the case. We like to give it that extra push, and give it that little extra marketing push because it’s important. These videos don’t just end when we submit the final cut—they exist as part of our catalogue as well. I think it’s just having this care for the product that we put out and looking at each video as something that we’re proud of and that we want to show people. So that’s really it. We take it from conception all the way to delivery, all the way to the marketing for as long as we can promote it for.
So you’re like a full-fledged media company?
Pretty much—with a little more personal care ‘cause we’re fans, you know.
Nas’ latest release, originally titled “N——r” was mired in controversy from the introduction of its title. What made you decide to participate in the project by directing the “Be A N——r Too” and “Sly Fox” videos?
I think Nas saw “75 Bars” for The Roots, which was kind of controversial as well. In that video, we kind of had this record executive getting tortured by Black Thought and burned with gasoline. So I think he saw that and was like this is kinda the same kinda tone that he was going for. And then when we heard the record, it really reminded me of this movie, “25th Hour,” by Spike Lee. And in that movie, there’s a scene where Ed Norton insults all kinds of races and cultures in New York; and no one is left insulted. And then towards the end his reflection just says that: “you had it all and you threw it all away.” So he’s just kinda like blaming everyone for him going to jail, and then at the end he’s just like “no, it’s your fault. You can’t use everyone as a scapegoat.” I think he liked that. He loved—that ending was like his favorite part of the video. It’s just like him talking to himself. I think he really got the irony of it. Of all of the records that he’s done this is like one of those that it very much rides the line in between exploitation and having a clear message. It’s not preachy and it’s not exploited. I said that he offends no one by offending everyone, and that was kinda what we had in mind.
In the videos for both Jay-Z’s “Blue Magic” trailer and Nas’ “Sly Fox,” both legendary figures never appear in the videos yet you were still able to create powerful and appealing visuals. Why do you think each video resonates despite the absence of those two great artists?
I think with Jay-Z, after he watched it—we were gonna shoot him actually that day he watched it. He said, “you don’t usually show the main connect in the video,” meaning you won’t show the guy that all this stuff leads up to. But I think he just didn’t want to be in it [laughs]. But in a way it was more mysterious that he wasn’t in there. And it was, again, the first visual so … and no one quite understood what this whole “American Gangster” concept was. So it teased the audience, it left them wanting more. It gave them enough … you didn’t expect to see him but you might have. And I think that because he wasn’t in there it was subconsciously a bold move and that he didn’t have to be in there because he’s Jay-Z.
[Ed. Note: I mentioned that I also noticed Nas wasn’t in the Sly Fox video, and Rik responded...]
That was really logistically; I think he was touring or whatever, but it’s one of those things where we created the storyline. And we had the idea that “ok, if Fox News is feeding us all this propaganda then where do we turn to for our news and for the truth.” Well, we have to turn to each other with the blogs, with the internet. This is where we receive most of our information and if the information is sort of like all united in a way, and we’re all communicating openly, then the truth will somehow be out there, otherwise you’ll get called out on it. So that’s really it—we are the media. So it wasn’t a straight up interpretation of “ok, we’re just going to show a bunch of Fox clips of everything he’s saying.” The first half is like that, but then the second half has almost no Fox clips—it’s just storyline. So he liked that. It was a good message. It was another thing that he saw that we did with his song and he didn’t really say to do it like that. We came up with it and I think it impressed him.
How has the decrease in big music video budgets affected your position as a video director?
Like I said, we really draw our inspiration from the artists more than the budget. So it makes us very valuable to a lot of these labels where there isn’t so much money allotted to every single song that the flagship artists wants to put out. The thing is we never knew what it was like to have a $1,000,000 to shoot a music video. So it’s not like we’re missing anything. It’s not like, “ah man, remember those days.” It depends really. If it’s there, it’s there. If it’s not there, it’s not there. It depends on the artist. It depends on the timing. It depends on the politics—there’s a lot of politics … It’s the game but because we’re so balanced and we’ve worked with such a whole range of different artists … it could be this big mainstream job that we do that has a big budget but not necessarily a really creative song, we can always balance it out with something from an underground artist, from a Joell Ortiz. Just kind of like put that out at the same time and create a balance of music video—something that really has a message to it versus something that’s just eye candy, and have a balance and not just be, “this is the only kind of videos we make,” which is what I feel like a lot of music video directors get stuck in. It comes from our feature film background. Like, we do other things outside of hip-hop but that’s really why these hip-hop videos feel the way they do because of the other things that we’re interested in. Whatever the climate is we’re gonna adjust to it. We’re more about the artist-to-artist more than business-to-business. Success to us is less about the budgets and more about how valuable we can make ourselves to the artists.
Interview conducted by Doug Wade
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