Will Smith - Just The Two Of Us

What this video is

Released July 1998 as the fourth single from Big Willie Style, 'Just the Two of Us' arrived at the apex of Will Smith's crossover dominance and during a period in which mainstream hip-hop was largely defined by hyper-masculine posturing. The video's warm-palette, rapid-montage documentary approach to Black fatherhood—intercutting Smith's own family with celebrity fathers—constituted a rare and deliberate…

Why it matters

A landmark in pop-rap's emotional vocabulary, this video demonstrated that hip-hop could occupy earnest, family-oriented cultural space without sacrificing commercial viability. It contributed to expanding the thematic range of rap music videos on MTV, prefiguring later artist-as-parent visual…

The director

Robert Nicholas Giraldi (born January 17, 1939, Paterson, NJ) is an American filmmaker, commercial and music video director, educator, and restaurateur. He earned a BFA from Pratt Institute (1960). He is best known for directing Michael Jackson's 'Beat It'…