Unsung: The Slow Motion Video Sequence

Maybe they don't know...don't show...or don't care about the one video tool that was most responsible for hip hop's rise to fame. Like T-Pain's vocoder, I think the slow motion video sequence is feeling a bit betrayed by the way it has been used, abused and essentially left for dead by all that have beared the fruit of it's labor!

Sometimes I look back and reminisce about how the slo mo edit basically romanticized Hip Hop and truly made it the melodrama that it is now most famous for today. I decided to chronicle the rise and fall of the slow motion video sequence with a few of my favorite videos.

It all started around the year of 1993 as a quick edit motion to transition from on video set up to another as to give rap videos their seemingly effortless flow from one scene to the next as diplayed throughout Video A (one of the earliest videos known to use the effect):

Video A: Onyx - "Slam"

Video B seems to adapt the same principles as Video A yet expands upon the concept of delaying slow motion camera shots. You may notice the slow motion head nod or running scenes that are soon to become quite the staple in rap videos of the era.

Video B: Del The Funky Homosapien - "Catch A Bad One"



By mid 1994 the slow motion sequence is all but required in order to have your videos played on MTV or BET. Wu Tang Clan was most known to frequently adapt the special effect with videos like "C.R.E.A.M." and O'l Dirty Bastard's "Brooklyn Zoo" but it wasn't until Video C was released that it was used to perfection in almost every scene as to evoke raw emotion not unlike an Italian ganster flick!

Video C: Wu Tang Clan - "Can It Be All So Simple"





Now by this time the hip hop music video has become over saturated with the SMVS so much to the point that it's now spilled over into the R&B format and is a main stay for teeny bop singers as shown below in Video D.

Video D: Brandy - "Baby"




For a while, it seemed as if the SMVS was here to stay forever. That was until Video E came along utterly crushing dreams and annihalating fantasies of hip hop stardom for new rappers who heavily relied on the crutch of cool video tricks and were now left to fiend for a new way of achieving success for the "add slow motion and stir" video formula is now dead and buried along with many other tactical video manuevers to include the aforementioned "ill head nod," the group running scene and many more rap video image staples! R.I.P. courtesy of The Roots, 1993-1996.

Video E: The Roots - "What They Do"