'Sky's The Limit' Showcases Both Spike Jonze & Notorious B.I.G. At Their Most Reflective
When The Notorious B.I.G. was murdered in March 1997, an immediate tonal shift was cast over his album, Ready To Die, released mere weeks later. But released it was and the promotion machine still had to chug along.
So what do you do when you have a could-be blockbuster single on your hands, but no artist to provide direct input for a video? If you’re director Spike Jonze, the choice is retrospection, with a twist that only someone like Jonze would (or even could) pull off.
The video for ‘Sky’s The Limit’ plays like a montage of Biggie’s life at its peak. Waking up in mansions, filming music videos, and performing at the classiest of clubs. The twist? All of the performers are children.
This was a major decision that was equal parts lauded and derided at the time. It’s easy to see how some people could walk away thinking the choice leads to some rather crude imagry of adult themes played out by kids. But on the other side, I find Jonze’s choice an effective one.
Knowing Biggie is dead and seeing his life played out by children really hammers home the reality that these kids, for as young as they may be, are actually not that much younger than Biggie himself, who died at age 24.
The read we get throughout the video is that everyone involved in this entire hip-hop mafioso scene are far too young and might as well be children. It’s a fact often lost on us even today. Going back and watching guys like Biggie & Tupac shows us a glimpse at boys who ended up needing to grow into men earlier than they deserved to due to their circumstances.
The track itself, flipping a sample of Bobby Caldwell’s ‘My Flame’, plays silky smooth and meloncholy. 112 glide in on the hook like a Greek chorus, reaffirming the need to keep striving and reaching for the top.
It’s an undoubtably beautiful track. Biggie himself only adds to the reflective vibes by recapping his childhood through the present and how he got to his pinnacle.
Jonze does some pitch perfect pastiche work, channeling the Hype Williams videos and Bad Boy Records’ house style that was a hallmark of the time. He puts these characters right into the exact spots where we remember them best, albeit aged down. Reminding us, daring us to keep in mind that simple reality.
The men we see in these videos and in interviews at the time come off as larger than life, often in complete assertion of their place in the music industry. But Spike Jonze reminds us that there’s a context to that image, even to that confidence. Peel it back even a little and it reveals some hard truths, only brought to the surface by the death of an icon.
Shoutout to StatGuyGreg on Twitter for the music video suggestion. You can recommend a music video for me to review by reaching out below:
Follow on Twitter: MightyVin
Follow on Instagram: VinForteNYC