Anyway, there were some good producers involved in the competition (K. Murdock of Panacea, Young Slim, Best Kept Secret, etc.) and an energetic performance from Wale, who seems to be a favorite of some/many these days, or at least a buzzworthy name. He was good, I'll give him that...good energy, good music, all around, dude did his thing.
In between competitors/performers, the DJ was playing some tracks, and it turns out that he was actually spinning DVDs which was kinda cool...interesting to see some of the music videos showing on the big screens for the joints he was spinning. At one point he was playing 'Da Rockwilder' from Meth and Red, which was a dope little jam when it came out at the beginning of this decade, but even more memorable than the track, was the video. It got me to thinking about some of the videos from that era (late 90's, early 00's) and some of the video directors, including the cat who did the 'Rockwilder' video, Dave Meyers. Many of the videos back then really defined the tracks that blew up cats like Cash Money and their whole crew (surprisingly, I don't believe Meyers did any videos for Cash Money, but it sparked the idea and his name is the one that stands out the most.) Of course, keep in mind that this was in a different time when heads would spend a huge budget on a video because there were not countless outlets for music videos yet, and in order to get your video played, it needed to be big. Nowadays, the math just doesn't make sense (obviously.) Back to the lecture at hand though, many of the joints that really blew up around this time had dope videos, and while I don't find myself checking MTV2/Jamz/VHI Soul/Fuse/etc. nearly as much as I did years ago, I don't think these type videos are being made as much. The look they accomplished was pretty impactful. Here's some of the vids from those days that stand out:
