OutKast will play a big role in our lives this summer, as they'll be hitting more than 40 festivals around the world, starting with Coachella.
So this seems like a good a time as any to revisit the music video that Doug has been suggesting I do a Music Video Relapse on for months - 1999's "Watch For The Hook" by Cool Breeze featuring OutKast and Goodie Mob. It was directed by David Nelson.
Fans of late 90s Atlanta hip hop may might know that Cee-Lo Green was in a group called Goodie Mob, so he's featured here in the video along with much younger looking versions of André 3000 and Big Boi. The video starts with the group at a table at a diner, all dressed in suits except for Cool Breeze himself, who is inexplicably in a neon orange outfit. I have no idea what they are talking about, but I do know it involves someone with their "jiggles" out and a dog biting someone in the ass. Normal diner talk.
It soon becomes clear that this video is supposed to be a parody or homage to the 1992 Quentin Tarantino film Reservoir Dogs. The clearest reference we get is André 3000 in the back of a car with blue all over his shirt, writhing around in pain - an obvious homage to the famous scene where Mr. Orange is in the back seat after being shot in the chest. It's soon revealed that André wasn't shot at all, but instead a blue pen has exploded in his suit. The discovery of this is one of the weirdest deadpan "look at the camera" moments ever in a music video.
Reservoir Dogs takes place after a diamond heist gone bad, and this music video actually does a pretty good job of keeping pace with that general structure of the film. Just like in the movie, we start in the diner and then the rest of the video features all of the performers gathering at a warehouse location. Unfortunately, that's where the references end, and most of the rest of the video is filled up with performance shots.
It's maybe a little prophetic that André 3000 is the only one involved in the most acted-out sequence in this video. Out of everyone we see here, André 3000 would go on to actually be an actor in addition to making music. Maybe André lobbied to get a parody scene in there and that's where the blue pen thing comes from. (If so, thanks André).
Everything in this video - form the pacing to the color treatment to the styling - is firmly rooted in the late 1990s, so considering how dated the style looks, this video stands up remarkably well on the strength of the three performers who are still in the spotlight.
