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Amused at the songs that got videos made for them

GrafwritahGrafwritah 4,184 Posts
edited July 2009 in Strut Central
I've been watching some of the 80s/90s hip hop videos on Yahoo Music, and looking back I'm amazed at some of the third and fourth tier songs that music companies bothered to make videos for. For instance, Neighborhood Snyper by Eazy-E. WTF? Why? What for?I get singles or lead tracks but it seems like a good chunk of videos are for songs that appeared to be made as filler. I don't get it.Any insight?

  Comments

  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,899 Posts
    I always took it as a way a label could get an artist to owe them more money down the line in recouping costs.
  • johmbolayajohmbolaya 4,472 Posts
    Back then, videos didn't have to be made specifically for a single. By the mid-90's though, it was somewhat rare to see a video that wasn't a single, or a video serving as a single. If MTV didn't play it, BET might play it. If neither did, maybe The Box would. You also have non-U.S. markets who were more than willing to take in any hip-hop video. There was also club play, you also had video shows, or segments on movie cable networks (anyone remember HBO's Video Jukebox?) that catered to it.

    I also think artists were hoping to do maybe two-for-one videos, in that if you formed a budget and finished one video with change, go ahead and make another one. The habit would eventually be that you do two songs in one video.
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