The Making of Nas’ It Ain’t Hard to Tell Video as told by Video Music Box’s Ralph McDaniels

Here’s an incredible article on the making of Nas’ It Ain’t Hard to Tell video.  It features in-depth input from Ralph McDaniels, founder and host of NYC’s Video Music Box, who produced and directed the video.  Below is an excerpt from the article and you can read the whole article here.  Props to NPR (yeah, that’s right…).

From NPR:

Since the heyday of hip-hop, one man has been broadcasting the music videos, the culture and the people in the community all throughout New York City. His name is Ralph McDaniels, and his show, which has aired on public television since 1984, is called Video Music Box.

McDaniels knows everybody. He and his company, Classic Concepts Video Productions, made music videos for musicians like the Notorious B.I.G., Public Enemy and Wu-Tang. Legendary music video director Hype Williams got his start at Classic Concepts.

The man widely known as Uncle Ralph has stories we want to share, so occasionally on The Record he’ll pick a classic video and take us behind the scenes. Today we go back to 1994, just before the release of Nas‘ ground-breaking, career-making debut album, Illmatic. The second single from it was “It Ain’t Hard To Tell”.  Click here to read the rest of the article.