LIFE Pulse Blog

OK, I must warn you that I almost died laughing after reading this.  Here is the basic lead into the below story.  Brett Ratner is an acclaimed movie director who got his start making hip hop music videos.  He has recently done the Rush Hour movies, X-Men 3 and is working on Beverly Hills Cop 4!  Well he has a new DVD coming out and he was an interview with Complex Magazine and they asked him to discuss some of the stories behind our favorite music videos he has shot.  Below is the story and the video for Redman’s ‘Tonight’s Da Night’ – HILARIOUS!!!

Redman “Tonight’s Da Night” (1993)
DIRECTOR’S COMMENTARY: “Redman wanted to shoot it in Jersey where he lived, in the worst area—it used to be a Jewish neighborhood, and his house was across the street from a Jewish cemetery. So, I show up and park outside his house at 5 o’clock in the morning. He was sleeping, and I wouldn’t knock on his door because I was scared! So I went around the neighborhood and shot all these faces in black and white, for four hours. He finally woke up at 11 [laughs]. We go down to this one abandoned house in the neighborhood where everyone sits on the stoop. I remember the part where he goes, ‘Would the packed pistol posse put their fingers on the triggers?‘ The packed pistol posse, who was his crew, pulled out their pistols and pointed at the camera—my DP said, ‘That’s it, I’m leaving!’ I said, ‘What do you mean? No one got shot! C’mon!’”

“The best part of the Redman story is, three o’clock in the morning, he says, ‘I want a white bitch to roll up and buy some drugs for me.’ This is when you could just do hardcore videos, and I’m like ‘You wanna portray yourself as dealing drugs?’ ‘Yeah, man, that’s real, man!’ The only problem is, we ain’t gonna find a white bitch in the middle of the night in the street. There was no women on my crew, so Redman goes, ‘What about that white bitch?’ And I said, ‘That’s my mom!’ He goes, ‘Well use that hoe! Put that hoe in the video’ So, my mom is in the Redman video, at the end of the video, when the car pulls up, buying drugs from Redman.”