Director Jim Swaffield's 1992 A Tribe Called Quest video "Scenario" looks awfully prescient in hindsight. Not only did Swaffield take the then unique step of splitting the performance among small windows scattered across the screen, but he tied them together in a sort of computer interface that not only predated multimedia networking sites like YouTube and MySpace, but also the Web itself.
Oil Factory director Ethan Lader obviously has his video history down cold and puts it on display in the clip "We Be" for up-and-coming underground hip hop act Tanya Morgan. Lader takes the basic framework of "Scenario" and updates it to create a fictionalized version of MySpace. Performance takes place in the various photo and video windows, in addition to the advertisements you would see on a typical page. Lader even uses the textual elements of a MySpace page to hype the band and their label, Loud Minority Music.
Watch "We Be" with director commentary by Ethan Lader in Quicktime (opens in new window) or at Google Video and You Tube. And, if you're a hip hop fan, you should definitely check out the video with the original audio, which is available at Tanya Morgan's MySpace page (of course).
