Dragnet Music Video City of Crime - Dragnet Music Video City of Crime

What this video is

Released in the summer of 1987, 'City of Crime' sits at the precise intersection of three significant cultural currents: the Hollywood blockbuster promotional video boom (exemplified by Ray Parker Jr.'s 'Ghostbusters' in 1984), the mainstream crossover of hip-hop into pop and film culture, and the peak of MTV's cultural dominance as a tastemaking platform. Universal Pictures deployed the video as a marketing…

Why it matters

A key artifact of the 'celebrity novelty rap' micro-genre of 1985–1990, in which non-musician public figures were deployed in hip-hop-adjacent marketing materials. Alongside tracks like Eddie Murphy's 'Party All the Time' and Bruce Willis's 'Respect Yourself,' 'City of Crime' documents rap's…

The director

Martin Henry Callner (August 25, 1946 – March 17, 2025) was an American director born in Chicago and raised in Cincinnati. He began his career at WCPO-TV in 1969 and moved into HBO specials by 1975. He transitioned to music videos in the early 1980s,…