Here at SRO we love hearing from directors, be it to yell at us for berating their work, or to inform us of interesting facts about their videos. After our post of the new Nas clip for ‘Be a N***er Too’, director Rik Cordero contacted us to fill us in with a bit of information about his video and to set us straight on a few things too.
His inspiration:
I really set out to make a video from the perspective of a Nas fan. I’m 29 so his moments of glory were deeply etched into my psyche. And really that’s what I wanted the video to accomplish from that perspective. He never said make this from my perspective or the perspective of the black struggle. If that were the case I’d probably turn it down. The video could have easily gone over the top and gave an opinion on the word itself. Thankfully it doesn’t. It presents dramatizations, some narrative some just straight up interpretation. I truly feel that it created a discussion and like Nas, we may all contradict ourselves when we talk about this video. Also 25th Hour was obviously a huge influence on the video. It’s one of my favorite Spike Lee movies and one which featured a large amount of white characters without screaming A SPIKE LEE JOINT about WHITE ANGST. It was a clear narrative, it touched on race relations in one scene but was ultimately about this one protagonist who fucked up his life. All of those elements I wanted to touch on and not just the novelty of the rant scene.
On the movie-like elements:
Regarding the extending intro and outro sequences. The opening was shot very very guerilla because we were right by ground zero in lower Manhattan among heavy security. It’s the first time I’ve been there in awhile and it’s become almost like a tourist attraction. Dudes are selling fake LV bags, T Shirts with tourists from all over the world staring into the hole. Very surreal. I thought showing the cranes and the faceless people would be an interesting juxtaposition with Nas’ lyrics and his commentary on politics, government, race relations, etc. The ending more or less speaks for itself but when each person stares into the camera their reactions come from me asking them to think about the last time they were discriminated against. Every race had their moment and that’s what you see.
On the controversy:
I asked myself that if Im gonna make a video for Nas, and not only that, for one of his more recent controversial songs I really need to stand behind it. I had to fight a lot of battles to keep it the way it is, to convince a whole lot of people that it can’t be over the top. When Def Jam was calling for blood, like literally showing people getting their heads blown off through stock footage I said no. That’s not that kind of video. If it was we’d put Nas in front of a greenscreen and just compile stock footage. That’s not this video. It’s much more powerful to suggest and leave it up to the viewer to create their opinions. I feel like we won the battle, we didn’t compromise our style and from the looks of things Nas will be selling some CDs on july 15.
On my comments about the video:
I’ll be honest the comment did strike a nerve. I’ve put myself out there so I’m open for intepretation. But I become sensitive when it comes to my crew, almost like family to me at this point, who day in and day out put everything into these videos because of the passion they feel for this craft. We aren’t a traditional production crew and that’s why my initial dissatisfcation with that industry is the stranglehold that the high end systems took in the music video genre. Some of those video commissioners and producers have lead many artists to believe that they need all the bells and whistles to tell a good story and they end up with videos that look amazing but have no soul. These are the kinds of battles that we face everyday and so when these videos get tagged with credits, it’s because they tell us not to but we do it anyway. We are an independent, unorthodox group of artists and fans who have to balance guerilla tactics with major label support. Without our tags they can do anything they want with our work. We’re loose cannons to them but they like us because we consistently develop a strong relationship with every artist because we truly care about them.
We really appreciated Rik getting in touch and sharing his thoughts. I can definitely see where he is coming from with the credits issue. We are always harping on blogs and websites who always seem to neglect to mention any credits for anyone but the band. I was mostly pointing out that the Three/21 website itself had no mention of the credits, but I guess it’s a bit redundant when the video has them full-blown in the clip itself. So my apologies to Rik, the man is a work horse (check his film roll), and obviously loves what he does and does it well. Keep fighting the good fight and thanks again.
Visit Three/21 to check more of Rik’s and fellow directors’ work.
And here’s the video again if you missed it two posts down.
0 Responses to “Rik Cordero Gets In Touch”