Remember the Sexy Sax Man video featuring a shirtless man that showed up in random places and played the melody line from "Careless Whisper" by George Michael? Mike Diva, who directed the video, has a pretty ridiculous YouTube channel featuring videos like a banned 90s Lunchables commercial aimed at "urban youths" and a Japanese Furby commercial. Lucky for us, some of these videos are music videos, and today we're watching one of our favorites, "I'm On Crack" (2011) by The Left Rights.
Co-directed by Pedro Flores, the video features Josh Harraway as the titular man on crack. (Josh Harraway is also the first Tupac impersonator and almost definitely involved in some way with the famous Tupac hologram, although he isn't allowed to talk about it.) Harraway spends the video in and around scenes that are exactly what we imagine being on crack is like, right down to the dancing cats, bright colors, and becoming a spinning rocket human who launches into the atmosphere.
One thing that I love about this video is the attention to detail that's paid to the timing of all the elements. We see a lot of "lots of random stuff" videos, but most of the time those random elements are just sort of stacked in there without much regard for the timing of the song. Mike Diva and Pedro Flores make sure that things from explosions to cuts are synced with the song. I can't explain why, but this just makes this video more fun to watch.
There aren't a lot of people in this video, but Mike Diva has a cameo as the driver of the car that Harraway stops with his hand.
In some weird way, this video also functions as an anti-crack PSA. At the end its clear that all the fantastical stuff happening is contained inside Harraway character's head, and he's really just a cracked out drifter. If we had more videos like this in anti-drug education, maybe we'd have no issues with crack. Although it does make being on crack look awesome. Oh well, show it to the kids anyways and let them decide.
If you are in the mood for more ridiculous videos, I highly recommend what I believe to be the strangest hip hop video of all time, "Berries and Cream" by Blapstar, also directed by Mike Diva.
Also, our first podcast interview was also an interview with Mike Diva, Pedro Flores, and Josh Harraway whre we talked about this video. It was pretty intense - check it out here.
