UGK (Underground Kingz) - Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You) (Director's Cut) ft. Outkast

What this video is

Released in summer 2007, this video arrived at the apex of Southern hip-hop's commercial dominance. UGK's collaboration with Outkast united two of the South's most distinctive creative lineages—Houston's street-level lyricism and Atlanta's avant-garde theatricality—in a single, cinematic event. The wedding narrative format transformed a 'player's anthem' into a culturally complex text about commitment, temptation,…

Why it matters

A landmark of Southern hip-hop visual storytelling, this video—produced by DJ Paul and Juicy J on a Willie Hutch soul sample—demonstrates the genre's maturation from performance clips to fully realized short-film narratives. Bryan Barber's cinematic direction elevated the Director's Cut into one…

The director

Bryan Barber (b. December 20, 1970) is an American music video and motion picture director. He directed his first music video for Outkast in 1998 and became known for narrative-driven, cinematically rich hip-hop videos. He has won three MTV awards, five BET…