Frontlines

Last week I talked about a platinum selling artist who makes his money by telling his audience how much he struggled to reach fame, and how sweet that fame was when he finally reached it. This week, I am focusing on two artists on the complete polar opposite side of the hip-hop spectrum. For those who are unfamiliar, Diabolic and Immortal Technique are two underground rappers who are entirely underrated and shunned due to mainstream radio rap and better marketing by other undeserving artists. Unlike mainstream rappers, they could only rely on their fans to spread their work in hopes that many of them will see their talent and boost their fame. Sure enough today, this video is sitting at over five million views, and continues to attract more people interested in the underground scene of hip-hop.

The video opens with the two artists walking into a dark tunnel with bright light shining behind them. As soon as they enter the tunnel, the lyrical madness begins and they enter a dark and gloomy atmosphere. Diabolic opens up the song and the two are now seen sitting around a table packing bullets into their shotguns. The video itself carries on simply by the two artists rapping directly to the camera with different scenery of urban city buildings in the background. Diabolic and Immortal Technique make one thing very clear by this video: If you have a great song, you don't need to have a mass budget music video to make you famous; you will get there if you deserve it.

The way the two artists speak to the camera makes it feel as though they are speaking directly to me, and the power they emphasize in each of their verses almost gives is devastatingly chilling. They succeed in this music video on the sheer fact that they have undeniable talent that shouldn't be covered up by a "mainstream" rap theme.

While this video was made in 2010, it reaches back all the way to the late nineties where music videos for hip-hop consisted of just the artist speaking to the camera with none of the women, drugs, alcohol, fancy cars, and expensive jewelry. Underground rap differs from all the other sub-genres in the sense that they still keep true to what really made hip-hop notorious in the first place. The lyrics and beat should be the only things that matter when it comes to hip-hop, and while music videos certainly try to portray the lyrics in a visual form, it is still important to use our own interpretation and imagination of what the artist is trying to portray.