FatLip - What's Up Fat Lip？

What this video is

Released in 2000 on Delicious Vinyl, 'What's Up Fatlip?' emerged at a critical juncture for West Coast alternative hip-hop. Following Fatlip's expulsion from The Pharcyde after Labcabincalifornia (1995), the single was a radical act of public self-flagellation in an era when hip-hop bravado was commercially dominant. Spike Jonze's guerrilla documentary approach — capturing Fatlip wandering Hollywood in costume,…

Why it matters

A landmark artifact of late-1990s/early-2000s West Coast alternative hip-hop and one of the defining works of Spike Jonze's music video canon. The video redefined confessional rap visual language by collapsing the boundary between performance, documentary, and self-parody. It demonstrated that…

The director

Adam Spiegel (born October 22, 1969), known as Spike Jonze, is an American filmmaker who began his career photographing BMX riders and skateboarders before transitioning to music videos. He directed iconic videos for Beastie Boys, Weezer, Fatboy Slim, Björk,…