N.O.R.E. - Nothin'

What this video is

Released in June 2002 at the height of the Neptunes' commercial dominance, 'Nothin'' represents the intersection of East Coast street rap credibility and pop-crossover accessibility. The Neptunes' production for N.O.R.E. — a Bronx rapper associated with CNN (Capone-N-Noreaga) and the gritty mid-1990s Queens/BX underground — exemplified the era's industry logic of pairing street artists with the era's most…

Why it matters

A landmark document of the Neptunes production era and its visual counterpart in hip-hop music video. The rapid-cut, warm-lit, party-centric aesthetic defined mid-tier-to-mainstream hip-hop video production in 2002 and serves as a time-capsule artifact of Def Jam's visual house style at peak…

The director

Steven Harold Carr (born April 7, 1965) is an American film director, music video director, and film producer from Brooklyn, NY. He studied fine arts at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts and co-founded Def Jam design firm The Drawing Board. He directed…