Sublime - Doin' Time

What this video is

Produced in the wake of lead singer Bradley Nowell's fatal heroin overdose in May 1996, this video exists within the peculiar cultural space of posthumous stardom: the self-titled Sublime album became a commercial phenomenon only after his death, with 'Doin' Time' as its final single push in late 1997. The song itself samples Herbie Mann's bossa nova cover of Gershwin's 'Summertime,' legally requiring a vocal…

Why it matters

A definitive artifact of mid-1990s reggae-rock and ska-punk crossover into alternative mainstream. The song's genre-hybridity — sampling jazz flute over hip-hop rhythms with rock vocals — is mirrored in a video aesthetic that blends documentary beach footage with performance clips, embodying the…

The director

Born Gregory Hippolyte Brown on July 12, 1957, in Los Angeles, CA. MFA from Stanford University; graduate film studies at NYU. Transitioned from adult film directing in the mid-1980s–1990s to a prolific mainstream music video career beginning in 1996,…