The Pharcyde: Drop
Since I first saw this video I've wanted to do an exegesis
on it. It was fall 2012, my partner was out of town and I was drunk and
watching old hip hop videos. I saw in it an interesting latent discussion on
racialized experience within American society.
“Drop” was directed by Spike Jonze, who for years had been directing music and skating videos, but hadn’t yet moved into directing full length movies like Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.
The Breakdown
0:00
Opens with a record scratch and a sample of the Adrock’s New York accented “mmm drop” from the Beastie Boys off the 1986 album Licensed to Ill . The Pharcyde had toured with the Beastie Boys in 94, and Adrock and Mike D make a cameo in the video later on. It’s Adrock’s “drop” which serves as title for the song. The concept of the using this sample came from J. Dilla (R.I.P.) who integrated it into the beat, and produced the song as well.
Notably, the scene opens upon an out of breath Fatlip (Derrick Stewart) sitting on the curb. This creates, immediately, an interesting juxtaposition between the fresh beginning of a song, like the beginning of a tea ceremony marked by the striking of a bell, the clear air marked with an initial record scratch. Fatlip, however, is already exhausted, breathing hard and looking up. As viewers we feel ourselves to have come into an action having just concluded. This is our first insight to the conceit of the video, namely that what we are seeing is being played in reverse, that time here is reversed (visually), while the song progresses normally. The actions upon the screen are occurring in reverse, as can most clearly be seen through various uni-directional actions like breaking glass or dumping water. The members of Pharcyde are also performing their actions in reverse, thus walking backwards, and singing backwards, or rather singing words a linguist (Robin Belvin) had constructed as mimicking the sounds the lyrics would make when played in reverse (notably in the above link Bootie Brown (Romye Robinson) points out that constructing a language, even one that didn’t mean anything, made it easier to mimic the words-in-reverse, rather than attempt to simulate the murmur that reversed language sounds like) . This ensured that as the recorded track was laid over the video that it would appear as if they were singing the words. In all aspects there is an artful intentional attempt to make this reversed presentation appear normal, however there is persistently something that feels off. Clothes move in directions we wouldn’t expect, people leap up in unexpected ways. To quote Hamlet, “time is out of joint,” but it is so well done that this fact moves into and out of our viewing focus.
00:45
Here we’re starting to get a view of the urban backdrop of the video. The alleyway is St. Vincent Court in L.A., now filled with storefronts. From where the video beings to where it ends at (207 w. 5th Street) is a distance of .2 miles, and, according to google maps, takes 2 minutes to walk. The video is 3:33 long.
1:03
The effortless leaps onto the tops of the vans are the first clear depiction of the sort of time reversal going on here. Bootie Brown remains the center of the frame, as it’s his lyrics which are being heard here. Fatlip, who the video started out upon, conspicuously lacks any lyrics in “Drop.” The lyrics themselves, while evincing some sharp and engaging wordplay with interesting dissonant riffs, generally keep to a classical bravado and boasting motif. SlimKid3’s lyrics starting at 1:30 are some of the most interesting.
1:15
This scene, taking part before the Los Angeles theater at 615 South Broadway is by far the most visually populated, and thus perhaps the most complicated. Notably bystanders are seen walking in reverse (and wearing clothes and colors typical of the mid 90s) and at 1:22 Mike D of the Beastie Boys bikes by (in reverse) on an old yellow beach cruiser with a banana seat. At 1:26 Adrock of the Beastie Boys appears in shirt with “Toke One” written on it. Notably this message was blurred out by MTV whenever they would play it. Also note that Adrock is walking in the “right” direction, marking him as the only person in the video other than the member of Pharcyde to do so. Notably, though, his lip synching is out of order with the soundtrack. It is Adrock’s voice, from 9 years previous, that we hear repeated on the track throughout.
1:35
Appearing in their boxers, we get a more overt repeat of the opening scene in which we as viewers come into an action already occurred. The passer-by’s facial expressions are worth paying attention to, ranging from bemusement to boredom, and some bounce their heads to the beat. Notably, everyone in the scene is a racial minority, a representation perhaps of downtown LA, of the urban environment. The white gaze upon the disrobing members are absent, unless the camera itself represents an embedded white gaze, as some have claimed, for instance, about Kodak film. But that’s not the claim I want to make here, rather that this scene and video occur within a larger social unconscious fueled by the dominant order, or to quote Laura Mulvey “the cinema poses questions of the ways an unconscious (formed by the dominant order) structure ways of seeing and pleasure in looking” (Mulvey, 834). In other words, we might consider this video as at a minimum engaging with or questioning “ways of seeing.” Through this something as minor as a music video can be seen as socially engaged, a social act, a characteristic that goes double for hip-hop, with its roots in a black urban zeitgeist. Thus, what of the members of Pharcyde disrobing on a public street? Here is an act which confounds normal social expectations (as can be seen by the looks on the faces of passerbys). In many places such an act could be met with violent, officially sanctioned reprisal through the actions of police, the juridical system, and a burgeoning prison-industrial complex. But here these actions are in a sense sanctioned by the camera, by the premise of a music video. Still, though, there remains an underlying discrepancy somewhat akin to the conceit of playing the recorded images in reverse. This act of the members of Pharcyde disrobing points towards a dominant social order being undermined, a characteristic I see also mirrored in the time reversal.
1:59
We have a cut interruption here. The preceding scene in the street, and the one following this one, are linearly connected. The paratactic insertion of this scene is an interesting one. Note the dog in the background on top of the stairs at 2:03, mirroring SlimKid3’s dog outfit, and the lines “dogging your health,” delivered by SlimKid3. Spike Jonze’s original one page treatment mentions including “tre’s [SlimKid3] puppy bouncing up at their feet,” so perhaps the dog on top of the stairs is that puppy grown up. Regardless the dog motif is an interesting one. If we choose to read anything into it, I think one possibility might be as a visualization of the sort of hip-hop lyrical “dogging” in which the rapper berates another person. Alternatively, by placing the dog head on, SlimKid3 may be read as making a claim about the experience of being dogged by dominant society, an experience of being dark skinned in our society (the color of the dog outfit being brown).
The video reversal effect here is also used to good effect. The basketballs bounce up the stairs, and Bootie Brown rolling up the stairs, again, defies the unidirectional logics of gravity, while simultaneously recalling the Odessa Steps scene from "Battleship Potemkin," a (perhaps tenuous) connection between the state sanctioned oppression of the socialists and the state sanctioned oppression of people of color.
2:17
We come across this final scene at the point where it left off from the stair scene. The layers of clothing lifting off from the ground and coming onto the bodies is visually engaging. The dumped water moving in reverse as it splashes up into the air operates as a sort of visual climax to the video. Notably the members of Pharcyde’s clothing is wet before this scene, and water can be seen on the ground, so apparently what we as viewers see is a second take.
Fatlip’s breaking of the painting on glass, alongside the painting’s construction, is one of the more important parts of the political implications that I want to posit as present within this video. Again, note the white hand extending from behind the camera, painting the red outlines, pointing again towards the question- Is the camera white? Here the painting hand operates to outline similar to the way a camera frames each scene. In a sense then this white hand and the camera perform similar actions in enacting a framing which goes on. But, more importantly, the breaking of the glass painting signifies a rupture, a breakdown of the constructed boundaries. By this I mean the boundaries constructed for the (black, male) members of Pharcyde are displayed as constructs only as thick as glass. The framing outline gets destroyed (of course this occurs within the larger framing outline of the camera’s horizon). In this action of the breaking of the painting I see the members of Pharycyde as rupturing constricting caricatures of black men. Notably at the end of the video we can see Fatlip tossing the hammer up in the air. Even before its construction the work of art’s destruction is already immanent. So the point to make here is that as artists the members of Pharcyde are pushing against, and past, the limitations dominant society places on black men. We can see this same sort of action in their disrobing in the streets. In these motions they are displaying the constructedness of dominant social perceptions by complicating or fracturing these perceptions, displaying the boundaries which get placed on black men (the red outlines with the smiling or frowning faces) as breakable, able to be replaced, for instance, with a sort of jouissance of dancing and disrobing in the street. Even the conceit of time reversal works towards the rupturing of social expectations. The reversal of linear expectations, such as gravity, displays the potential to reverse or resist certain restrictions. We might consider this positing of a reversal as akin to Derrida’s trace. Within the moment lies occulted differences. Within the expectations of how black men are “supposed” to act in society lie occulted alternatives which have been denied in favor of certain restrictions and social demands. As Derrida explains it in "Speech and Phenomena," the trace "is a possibility which not only must inhabit the pure actuality of the now but must constitute it through the very movement of differance it introduces" (67). The differance here, which gets occulted within the now, includes possibilities of dancing in the street and disrobing, possibilities which are notable in their absence from the commonplace. "Without a retention in the minimal unit of temporal experience, without a trace retaining the other as other in the same, no difference would do its work and no meaning would appear" (Of Grammatology, 62). So in reversing temporal experience the trace is allowed to flow back upon itself, displaying difference as an occulted presence that lies within meaning. So disrobing is displayed as a presence within the constancy of not disrobing, revealing a cultural repression of black men's bodies. This video then may be considered as a pointing towards a persistent occulted offness within our culture, akin to the viewer’s feelings of oddness at watching well choreographed actions which retain a feeling of being off kilter due to the conceit of time reversal. Thus perhaps this video may simulate a feeling of blackness within our society, a feeling of actions which feel “off” due to surrounding social restrictions which limit acceptable behavior and expression.
So in these ways we might read the Pharcyde’s “Drop” video as containing political and social implications. The major conceit of the video prompts a feeling of oddness and unreality which we might connect to the experience of racial experience within America. The time reversal allows for an investigation which resurrects occulted trace moments within an assumed linearity of “the way things are to be” within our society.
