DMX - Who We Be (Explicit Letterbox Version)

What this video is

Released September 25, 2001 — less than two weeks after the September 11 attacks — 'Who We Be' landed in a moment of profound national trauma and racial reckoning. The video's deliberate use of archival imagery depicting segregation-era violence and police brutality against Black Americans positioned DMX not merely as a rapper but as a social chronicler. The song appeared on The Great Depression, DMX's fourth…

Why it matters

A landmark in socially conscious hardcore hip-hop video production. 'Who We Be' bridges the raw street aggression of late-1990s East Coast rap with a more explicitly political visual language, employing archival civil rights imagery as context for contemporary Black experience. Kahn's rapid…

The director

Born Ahn Jun-hee on October 12, 1972 in Busan, South Korea; raised in Livorno, Italy and Jersey Village, Texas. Attended NYU Tisch School of the Arts before dropping out to direct music videos. Built career through 1990s hip-hop and pop videos, later…