J.D. and Jay-Z - Money Ain't a Thang
*** (of four)
Allow me to confess two reasons I'm a huge geek. First, and most obviously, I like this pompous, softball song and video. Second, and more incriminatingly, I just went into my roommate's bedroom - waking up his girlfriend in the process - to snatch his iPod so I could synch up my EP-mode VHS copy of the "Money Ain't a Thang" video with the uncut album track of the song so I could hear it in crystal-clear CD quality without any MTV content censorship. Even more incriminatingly pathetic, it's midnight on a Friday and I'm sitting in my bed with my 2001 Fujitsu on my lap and a naked, 25-watt stained-glass novelty bulb illuminating my room. Keep in mind I am a 27-year-old college graduate.
The concept of the video? These fuckers have money to burn, money to toss out their goddamn car windows. It was an audacious concept during the boom of the Clinton economy, and it's even more audacious statement in the mid-zero-zeros, when thousands of our fellow countrymen are homeless due to natural disasters. And, instead of volunteering in the soup kitchen and donating old clothes to the less-fortunate*, Jay-Z's dumping a gym bag full of hundred-dollar bills on the hood of Jermaine Dupri's Ferrari and offering the ladies "ice" to chill down their martinis. The "ice" is a handful of uncut diamonds Jay-Z drops into the girl's drink and, while impressive, it should be noted that the "ice" does not lower the temperature of the martini one degree.
J.D. has been a multiplatinum producer since the age of 17, so he does indeed have money to burn and toss out windows. In the video's intro - when he's lounging around the pool with Jay-Z and just kind of muses, "You know what? I think I'm gonna direct my next video, even though my ideas are stupid" - you get the feeling it's not much of a fictionalization. And, yeah, in case you're wondering, Dupri's ideas are pretty stupid. But, for some overindulgent reason I can't quite put my finger on, the whole experience is a humongous guilty pleasure.
In a vain effort to prove he's some kind of blueblood, Dupri spends an entire verse racing a high-class lady on a galloping horse out at a rustic country club somewhere. Then Jay-Z and Dupri race each other in convertibles on a two-lane country road while waving stacks of money around. This showboating attracts the attention of a redneck Rosco, whose cruiser can't quite catch up to the pair of rappers. I don't want to give away any exciting surprises, but by the video's end, dozens of bales of hay are destroyed and Rosco is mighty frustrated. ("Tarnation!" screams the flustered Sheriff Coltrane.)
All the while, director Darren Grant cuts to shots of J.D. and Jay-Z rapping in front of a palatial plantation and, true to the 1998 hip-hop scene, rapping in front of three rows of identically dressed fly girls dancing in a too-bright room with washed-out colors. Ridiculous, overblown and supremely watchable.
* = Which would make for one goddamned exciting hip-hop video, to be sure.
--
Read my original 1998 review of "Money Ain't a Thang" by clicking here and scrolling down to #58.
Allow me to confess two reasons I'm a huge geek. First, and most obviously, I like this pompous, softball song and video. Second, and more incriminatingly, I just went into my roommate's bedroom - waking up his girlfriend in the process - to snatch his iPod so I could synch up my EP-mode VHS copy of the "Money Ain't a Thang" video with the uncut album track of the song so I could hear it in crystal-clear CD quality without any MTV content censorship. Even more incriminatingly pathetic, it's midnight on a Friday and I'm sitting in my bed with my 2001 Fujitsu on my lap and a naked, 25-watt stained-glass novelty bulb illuminating my room. Keep in mind I am a 27-year-old college graduate.
The concept of the video? These fuckers have money to burn, money to toss out their goddamn car windows. It was an audacious concept during the boom of the Clinton economy, and it's even more audacious statement in the mid-zero-zeros, when thousands of our fellow countrymen are homeless due to natural disasters. And, instead of volunteering in the soup kitchen and donating old clothes to the less-fortunate*, Jay-Z's dumping a gym bag full of hundred-dollar bills on the hood of Jermaine Dupri's Ferrari and offering the ladies "ice" to chill down their martinis. The "ice" is a handful of uncut diamonds Jay-Z drops into the girl's drink and, while impressive, it should be noted that the "ice" does not lower the temperature of the martini one degree.
J.D. has been a multiplatinum producer since the age of 17, so he does indeed have money to burn and toss out windows. In the video's intro - when he's lounging around the pool with Jay-Z and just kind of muses, "You know what? I think I'm gonna direct my next video, even though my ideas are stupid" - you get the feeling it's not much of a fictionalization. And, yeah, in case you're wondering, Dupri's ideas are pretty stupid. But, for some overindulgent reason I can't quite put my finger on, the whole experience is a humongous guilty pleasure.
In a vain effort to prove he's some kind of blueblood, Dupri spends an entire verse racing a high-class lady on a galloping horse out at a rustic country club somewhere. Then Jay-Z and Dupri race each other in convertibles on a two-lane country road while waving stacks of money around. This showboating attracts the attention of a redneck Rosco, whose cruiser can't quite catch up to the pair of rappers. I don't want to give away any exciting surprises, but by the video's end, dozens of bales of hay are destroyed and Rosco is mighty frustrated. ("Tarnation!" screams the flustered Sheriff Coltrane.)
All the while, director Darren Grant cuts to shots of J.D. and Jay-Z rapping in front of a palatial plantation and, true to the 1998 hip-hop scene, rapping in front of three rows of identically dressed fly girls dancing in a too-bright room with washed-out colors. Ridiculous, overblown and supremely watchable.
* = Which would make for one goddamned exciting hip-hop video, to be sure.
--
Read my original 1998 review of "Money Ain't a Thang" by clicking here and scrolling down to #58.
posted by daytime at 3:52 AM
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