Music Video Review: This Boy Be Bad
L.L. Cool J featuring Jennifer Lopez
"Control Myself"
Todd Smith
Director: Hype Williams
When he was born in 1968, he was given the name James Todd Smith. Then, at the brink of bursting onto the hip-hop scene in 1984, he became LL Cool J. And now, for the title of an album and the name of a clothing line, he has taken up the monniker Todd Smith. We might think of this new, more mature LL as someone a little less warmhearted than the character who delightfully stuffed his face in "Last Holiday." And the difference between LL and Todd Smith is that Todd dons sunglasses or slings his baseball caps low, never revealing his eyes. He has something to hide, or, maybe he doesn't want you to catch him looking at you. And ladies, he's out to convince you that he's a fiend with a fire in his pants.
I have nothing but respect for the man who brought us "I Can't Live Without My Radio" and "I Need Love." He's ripped as fuck, a co-founder of that `90s label FUBU, and a moderately successful actor. Truth be told, LL's got a lot to recommend himself. But with "Control Myself," newly minted Todd Smith's first offering is best described as an amateur mash-up of "Baby Got Back" and samples of Fergie titillating her humps. In a failed attempt to stoke the fire of the song, he's brought in reinforcements in the form of Jennifer Lopez. One would think that this would be a smart move for the video too, but not even the JLo who once dazzled in "Out of Sight," and who continues to make pretty cute high heel wedges with her clothing-cum-accessories line and slightly danceable songs, can save the musical and visual disaster that is "Control Myself."
Lyrics like "It's hard to control myself / you've got, you've got, you've got / what it takes to make this boy be bad" are far from hot. They're tepid, at best. They would have been best served in a straight-forward, "unimaginative" music video. But because the lyrics are so bad, we wish for something of sustinence to cling to, and that is surely not found in this overly, idiotically complicated video. Using a device that's begun to be employed for short musical adverts, there's a widescreen in the middle, flanked, top and bottom, by two halves of another scene. NE-YO's video for "So Sick" uses the device well, but "Control Myself" highlights to evils of going crazy for filmic novelties. For example, in the middle widescreen panel, we see LL's rapping about how hard it is to control himself, but framing this panel is a group of showgirls strutting their stuff. Their scene with the showgirls, however, is split into two, such that the girls' heads are on a top panel, and their legs and butts on the bottom. The effect is disorienting and requires more concentration than this horrendously overproduced video deserves. The split-screen device defines overzealousness when the top and bottom panels are populated by one single person: LL's head and arms flail on the top in crucified style, but because the rest of his body is on the bottom panel, it gives the illusion that he's been Gumb-ified. In the middle, cutting into LL's elongated torso, is a close-up of J.Lo's face.
As this snippet might lead you to believe, there's too much going on this video, and to make matters worse, none of it is interesting. It's the same typical hip-hop fare: hot dancers, hot bods, lots of alcohol, all rife with vanity. At one point, it almost seems that LL's imploring us to take his sexiness seriously when he flexes his muscles as though he were competing for Mr. Universe. Possibly impressive, but not impressive enough. JLo, almost as though she senses how much this video lags, gets in on the act, wanting to convince us that she's hot when she lilts, "The afterparty is at my body / come meet me you're invited." Sorry, I'll be at R. Kelly's hotel lobby.
Towards the end of the video, Todd Smith (whom I can no longer bear to call LL because of this travesty of a video) and JLo convene, trying to woo us with the phrase "Zuh-zuh." The meaningless noise is repeated again and again, at first with erogenous intentions and then more playfully, but every time to ill effect. In the end, the boring "Zuh-zuh"-ing coagulates into a parody of the entire three minute video that they've just made us sit through. And all I could wonder was how such an utterly ridiculous video could have been made.
===
More coverage: Gary Sussman is all too kind to the undynamic duo.
On a tangential note: what is with the Pussycat Dolls's song "Beep," the even more whorish girl's version of "Humps" -- and why on earth would Will.I.Am agree to be featured in it?!
"Control Myself"
Todd Smith
Director: Hype Williams
When he was born in 1968, he was given the name James Todd Smith. Then, at the brink of bursting onto the hip-hop scene in 1984, he became LL Cool J. And now, for the title of an album and the name of a clothing line, he has taken up the monniker Todd Smith. We might think of this new, more mature LL as someone a little less warmhearted than the character who delightfully stuffed his face in "Last Holiday." And the difference between LL and Todd Smith is that Todd dons sunglasses or slings his baseball caps low, never revealing his eyes. He has something to hide, or, maybe he doesn't want you to catch him looking at you. And ladies, he's out to convince you that he's a fiend with a fire in his pants.
I have nothing but respect for the man who brought us "I Can't Live Without My Radio" and "I Need Love." He's ripped as fuck, a co-founder of that `90s label FUBU, and a moderately successful actor. Truth be told, LL's got a lot to recommend himself. But with "Control Myself," newly minted Todd Smith's first offering is best described as an amateur mash-up of "Baby Got Back" and samples of Fergie titillating her humps. In a failed attempt to stoke the fire of the song, he's brought in reinforcements in the form of Jennifer Lopez. One would think that this would be a smart move for the video too, but not even the JLo who once dazzled in "Out of Sight," and who continues to make pretty cute high heel wedges with her clothing-cum-accessories line and slightly danceable songs, can save the musical and visual disaster that is "Control Myself."
Lyrics like "It's hard to control myself / you've got, you've got, you've got / what it takes to make this boy be bad" are far from hot. They're tepid, at best. They would have been best served in a straight-forward, "unimaginative" music video. But because the lyrics are so bad, we wish for something of sustinence to cling to, and that is surely not found in this overly, idiotically complicated video. Using a device that's begun to be employed for short musical adverts, there's a widescreen in the middle, flanked, top and bottom, by two halves of another scene. NE-YO's video for "So Sick" uses the device well, but "Control Myself" highlights to evils of going crazy for filmic novelties. For example, in the middle widescreen panel, we see LL's rapping about how hard it is to control himself, but framing this panel is a group of showgirls strutting their stuff. Their scene with the showgirls, however, is split into two, such that the girls' heads are on a top panel, and their legs and butts on the bottom. The effect is disorienting and requires more concentration than this horrendously overproduced video deserves. The split-screen device defines overzealousness when the top and bottom panels are populated by one single person: LL's head and arms flail on the top in crucified style, but because the rest of his body is on the bottom panel, it gives the illusion that he's been Gumb-ified. In the middle, cutting into LL's elongated torso, is a close-up of J.Lo's face.
As this snippet might lead you to believe, there's too much going on this video, and to make matters worse, none of it is interesting. It's the same typical hip-hop fare: hot dancers, hot bods, lots of alcohol, all rife with vanity. At one point, it almost seems that LL's imploring us to take his sexiness seriously when he flexes his muscles as though he were competing for Mr. Universe. Possibly impressive, but not impressive enough. JLo, almost as though she senses how much this video lags, gets in on the act, wanting to convince us that she's hot when she lilts, "The afterparty is at my body / come meet me you're invited." Sorry, I'll be at R. Kelly's hotel lobby.
Towards the end of the video, Todd Smith (whom I can no longer bear to call LL because of this travesty of a video) and JLo convene, trying to woo us with the phrase "Zuh-zuh." The meaningless noise is repeated again and again, at first with erogenous intentions and then more playfully, but every time to ill effect. In the end, the boring "Zuh-zuh"-ing coagulates into a parody of the entire three minute video that they've just made us sit through. And all I could wonder was how such an utterly ridiculous video could have been made.
===
More coverage: Gary Sussman is all too kind to the undynamic duo.
On a tangential note: what is with the Pussycat Dolls's song "Beep," the even more whorish girl's version of "Humps" -- and why on earth would Will.I.Am agree to be featured in it?!
posted by Melissa at 10:21 PM
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