Hype Williams is arguably one of the most successful and well-known music video directors in Hip Hop — banging out a bunch of classic videos and the film Belly.
But there’s at least one video that his client hated, and that’s the visuals to Wu-Tang Clan’s “Can It All Be So Simple.”
“‘Can It Be’ was like ’93. That was the first one I can remember where I got it right. Somehow the photography was flawless, caught was perfect. Perfect light,” Williams told Complex. “The biggest problem we had was those guys. They were young superstars. They were uncontrollable, and they all hated the video. When I finished it I thought it was a masterpiece. So once they said they hated it, we had these horror edit sessions.”
“It was just whatever they thought it was supposed to be, what I did wasn’t it,” he continued. “So we had huge fights and arguments and violent outbursts, RZA especially, because they thought I had cheated them and didn’t do a good video. But with ‘Can It Be’ it was the first time I knew for a fact they were wrong.”