The first video on MTV wasn't a Hip-Hop one...duh, right?!?

So, it was a late brunch, and of course, MTV always comes up if you work there. My new friend and I got into a discussion about the first video to play on MTV.

Now, I wasn't there or anything, but I remember in my Making Sense of Popular Culture (COM 101 for you officials) there was a brief paragragh in one of the many packets of reading (Perouka did a lot of copies, because nobody really talked about COM 101 in a full textbook "back then") about MTV, and I never forgot one sentence: MTV debuted on air August 1, 1981.


And the first video they played was Video Killed the Radio Star. Go on, watch it:

...and the paragragh ended for me there. I wasn't around when they started the channel. What I mean by that is, I wasn't around when the concept was fostered. Something about music videos...they were cheap marketing tools to sell albums. Remember, it didn't cost the millions of dollars that somehow, it began to cost.

In fact, Wikipedia (my guide to the world) states that "several noted directors got their start creating music videos." The likes of these people will include Spike Jonze, F. Gary Gray, Hype Williams and Michel Gondry to name a few. This post isn't about directors, but I thought I should mention that, kinda like a footnote. Thanks Wikipedia. Readers, keep that one in your back pocket.

I was curious about the first rap video to play on MTV, and of course, how could it not have been Run DMC (the debate was LL Cool J, which I rejected immediately with no bias, as I am from Queens by way of Brooklyn). You can't watch it, unless you click here. Sorry, it's the labels and their whole "disabling" shit. More on that another day.

On the left is Diggy, Sheesh! Your genes are strong Rev...Love this picture tho.

However, I was intrigued at the fact that although the station launched as a mostly rock channel, plays from Michael Jackson are noted as saving the channel from utter failure. Boy, what Daria could do to turn this all around.

Sorry.

Run DMC sold gold the year that video played on MTV. It was 1984; probably around the same time Bill Cosby was sitting in a room debating on whether Rudy would be a boy or a girl (I think they made the right decision.)

Ms. Rudith Lillian Huxtable/Keisha Knight Pulliam

...And then a new twitter thread began later the same night of the conversation at Brunch, #iremember. Someone wrote that they "remembered when they played videos on MTV and BET."

I always get annoyed, as soon as I read that. I've seen it before, heard it before and debated it, too.

Please. #iremember when...you really didn't need a million dollars to do a video, could sell brands and no one was looking for a cosign from you in the record/lyrics to go buy a pair of Guess Jeans (what, didn't everybody want to be specifically the "Pleasure Principle" Janet Jackson for Halloween?):



#iremember when you could have girls in bathing suits in videos, but the song were appropriate to the actual reason why the girls were in bathing suits (RIP Tupac the Magnificent...go shorty, it's ya birfday):

I still cringe at the girl who over gyrates tho, as well as the girl with the pink tassle bathing suit...gross.


#iremember when an actress could get a break doing a video, because she knew there was more to accomplish than popping extacy pills in the back of SUVs for a "Principal" role:

There are a lot of things #iremember...I'd simply like to be inspired again.

P.S. If you guess who that actress is, I don't have any t-shirts, but I promise to print one up as soon as I get my new website done. Pinky swear, I remember everything.