Legendary director Hype Williams recently claimed that his original cut of Nas’ “Hate Me Now” video was as controversial as “This is America” by Childish Gambino, a video that garnered over 70 million views in one week and created countless headlines.
Williams video famously portrayed Nas and Diddy as Jesus Christ like figures who were being crucified Roman style. The original cut even prompted Diddy to physically threaten Nas’s then manager Steve Stoute over its perceived blasphemous portrayal of the two. Williams recently said the original cut was just as edgy as Gambino’s new video that features church choirs getting shot up and a man being killed in cold blood just as it opens.
“What you see here is the watered-down version of what went down,” explained Williams to a crowd watching “Hate Me Now” at Red Bull’s New York Director’s Series discussion panel according to Billboard. “This is very important, and I want everybody to know that this video was probably, for its time period, the equivalent to what Childish Gambino just did. The first edit of this video at this time had to be the greatest thing anyone has ever seen. Because of who Puff was and where he was going, he needed a release, so he had no restraints filming this video. The things that he did and the things we filmed him doing were so radical when edited to this music, I couldn’t even describe it, but at this time, the greatest thing we’ve ever seen was Puff as a special effect, something that I feel is happening with Childish.”
Source: complex.com
