The Death of the Music Video, the Decline of Black Visual Language

Let’s talk music videos. Chile, the ghetto.

Making music videos is no easy feat. Directors are really going through it with these budgets, and if you’re an even smaller director… yeah thoughts and prayers truly. I mourn the loss of the creativity and budgets that existed in the 90s and 2000s, the world in which music videos where an introduction to the world of an artist. The music video wasn’t simply marketing, it was one of the most influential forms of visual art within pop culture.

For Black artists in particular, the music video became one of the few places where they could exercise visual authorship at scale. While Hollywood often limited Black filmmakers to certain genres or narratives, music videos offered creative freedom. I remember being a kid and coming home from school and turning on the television to MTV or BET just to watch the music videos of my favorite artists. Pharrell. Michael Jackson. Missy Elliot. Busta Rhymes. It was a goddamn event. We spoke about them at school. Danced to the choreography on the playground. They were moments we waited for!

Music videos weren’t just promotional clips, they were cultural artefacts. One of the few places were black music was funded at a scale. They also became a living archive of Black culture. They captured so much of black life. For many people around the world, music videos were their first encounter with places like Atlanta, Houston, South Central Los Angeles, or Harlem through the lens of celebration, performance, style and framing.

Now we’re in the era of content, budgets have been downsized significantly. Labels no longer spend a fat bag on videos because the economics no longer make sense. Streaming pays differently. Social media rewards frequency over craftsmanship. Attention is now short.

Large productions commissioned costume designers, choreographers, cinematographers, production designers, editors, visual effects artists and emerging directors. Artists could actually making a living working on a music video set. Now you’ll get a label coming to you with a brief and budget of 10k, two days to make the treatment, pitching against 15 other directors, and production a week later. GOODLUCK!

Budgets aren’t just about scale, they’re about flexibility and pushing art and breaking boundaries.

I believe we are being fed a lie that music videos hold no significance or carry any weight. There are so many music videos that have been so heavily influential, that their DNA is embedded in every aspect of culture and art and fashion. Missy Elliott and Hype Williams building a visual universe so original that thirty years later fashion houses are still borrowing from it without credit. Beyoncé's Lemonade, technically a visual album which refused to flatten black womanhood into a single narrative. Each chapter told a story and it is her most important offering to date.

Even the way Spike Lee shot Michael Jackson's They Don't Care About Us in Brazil and made a document about structural racism. I remember that video vividly, it was also my very first introduction to the vibrancy of Brazil. That’s better than any postcard. And more recently Kendrick Lamar’s videos, who spent the last decade insisting music videos are still incredibly monumental. He was deliberate in the directors he chose because he understands the importance of the medium and it’s impact on culture and artistic identity. Many of his music videos were snapshots of where we are politically and symbolic and vulnerable in their approach.

They are also the videos I see the most referenced when briefs go out. So what’s tea?

My very first music video I directed for a friend. The video is called “Babe” by Louis Culture and Tora-I ft. Richie. We had a very tiny budget but it was important that I highlighted London life in a very authentic way. That video blew up the song and the views on it are 670,000+ and counting. It’s his biggest video to date. No label. No huge following. And the feedback? Well go check for yourself!

Many of today’s most celebrated filmmakers first developed their visual language directing music videos. The format became one of the few places where directors could lead ambitious productions before Hollywood. Spike Jonze. Spike Lee. Melina Matsoukas. Hype Williams.

The music video was how directors entered the industry with enough visible work to be taken seriously. It was how visual references got built and circulated within Black culture specifically. We also lost audience education. An audience that has been watching sophisticated, ambitious Black visual work for years develops a visual literacy that changes what it asks for and what it will support.

I’m a director yes, but the argument I am making is not primarily about directors. It is about what happens to a culture when its visual language is underfunded. When the images that represent it are made quickly and cheaply and without the time to think. When the people with the most sophisticated understanding of that culture are not given the resources to put that understanding on screen. When that form is underfunded it produces videos that are seen and then forgotten about minutes later. It produces a gap in the visual record.

No one remembers that Tiktok dance that was made to promote a song. But we do remember Michael Jackson Thriller, decades later. The music video is a historical document and if there is intention and proper infrastructure — it will outlive any trend and ensure that the music has a long lifespan.