Mc 900 Ft Jesus - But If You Go

JUL 01 1994 · 12:00

Mc 900 Ft Jesus - But If You Go (1994) Era: Alternative Hip-Hop / Post-Industrial Dance (1994) - Second-generation college-radio underground, bridging late-era industrial hip-hop and the emerging alt-dance crossover moment on American Recordings; released the same year as Beck's 'Mellow Gold' and Beastie Boys' 'Ill Communication.' High cult and archival value. This video represents a rare surviving audiovisual artifact from an under-documented chapter of alternative hip-hop history, the final promotional campaign of a widely influential but commercially underserved artist. Its unknown director status makes it a useful case study in the gaps of 1990s music video archival practice, and the warm, low-contrast aesthetic preserves a precise visual mood specific to the early-digital 4:3 production era. The track's inclusion on the 'Doom Generation' soundtrack adds additional cross-media cultural resonance. Context: Released in 1994 on Rick Rubin's American Recordings, 'But If You Go' represented the softer, jazzy-pop face of MC 900 Ft. Jesus's final album cycle, a deliberate contrast to the more confrontational industrial-hip-hop work that preceded it. The video existed within the brief window when alternative and college-radio rap could still access MTV rotation. Griffin's genre-fusing aesthetic, blending trumpeter-poet sensibility, electronica, and socially conscious rap, was frequently described by critics as ahead of its time, prefiguring artists such as Beck and anticipating the trip-hop and abstract hip-hop movements that would crystallize in the mid-to-late 1990s. Director notes: The video was produced in support of the second single from MC 900 Ft. Jesus's third and final studio album 'One Step Ahead of the Spider' (American Recordings, released 1994-06-28). The song was described by Trouser Press as bubbling 'lightly with electronic techno-funk and sweet backing vocals.' The single was released in multiple remix configurations including Essex Mayhem, Chilled, Esperanto, and Primo 1.3 Full Length versions on a European 12". The track also appeared on the soundtrack to the 1995 Gregg Araki film 'The Doom Generation.' No production company, director, or shoot location has been publicly documented for this video.