LL COOL J - Around The Way Girl

What this video is

Released in 1990 as the third single from 'Mama Said Knock You Out,' 'Around the Way Girl' arrived at the precise moment hip-hop was consolidating its hold on mainstream American pop culture. The song reached #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 — LL Cool J's first top-10 single — and #5 on the R&B chart, signaling a crossover that was reshaping MTV's programming calculus. The video's central argument — that authentic Black…

Why it matters

A landmark in hip-hop music video form, 'Around the Way Girl' is among the earliest major-label rap videos to deploy a meta-fictional narrative structure — the casting call conceit — to deliver the song's ideological argument visually. Director Paris Barclay's realist aesthetic anticipated the…

The director

Paris Barclay (b. 1956, Chicago Heights, IL) is a Harvard-educated director who began his career in advertising before co-founding music video company Black & White Television. He directed eight videos for LL Cool J and worked with Bob Dylan, Janet Jackson,…