During the Red Bull Music Festival in New York City, legendary music video director Hype Williams sat down with journalist Jeff “Chairman” Mao.
The Queens-native spoke with Mao about his illustrious career, including working with artists like Tupac Shakur, Beyoncé, and many others.
Billboard Magazine was on hand for the discussion including:
- How Jada Pinkett Smith wrote the treatment for the Mad Max-inspired Tupac/Dre “California Love” video.
- How Beyoncé is his favorite artist to work with and that “Drunk In Love” took only 3 hours to film.
- Meeting Timbaland, Missy Elliot and Ginuwine while they worked craft services for a Jodeci video.
- And stories about the infamous Nas video for “Hate Me Now,” including how it was a “watered down” version of the original that took out some of Diddy’s spectacular antics.
- “What you see is the watered-down version of what we did. This video was the equivalent of what Childish Gambino just did,” Williams said. “The first edit of this video at this time had to be the greatest thing anyone has ever seen. Because of who Puff was and where he was going, he needed a release so he had no restraints filming this video. The things that he did and the things we filmed him doing were so radical when edited to this music, I couldn’t even describe it, but at this time, the greatest thing we’ve ever seen was Puff as a special effect, something that I feel is happening with Childish.”
Click here to read the full article on Billboard.
Hype Williams speaks with Jeff ‘Chairman’ Mao (Photo: Maria Jose Govea)
