Lauryn Hill - Doo Wop (That Thing)

What this video is

Released August 1998 as the lead single and solo debut from Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, 'Doo Wop (That Thing)' arrived at a watershed moment for hip-hop's mainstream legitimacy and Black female artistry. The video's split-screen 1967/1998 conceit literalises the song's intergenerational moral argument, visually rhyming the doo-wop and soul era with late-90s hip-hop to argue that the social…

Why it matters

A canonical artifact of the late-90s conscious hip-hop and neo-soul convergence. The video was the first rap video to win MTV VMA Video of the Year, marking a historic crossover moment for hip-hop into the mainstream prestige video canon. Its split-screen formalism is widely cited in music video…

The director

Big TV! is the directing duo of Andy Delaney and Monty Whitebloom. Andy Delaney is a Goldsmiths College graduate. Together as Big TV!, they have been making music videos and TV commercials for leading brands and artists since 1990, and are employed by DNA,…