david bammer Member since Jun 20th 2010 4467 posts
Sat Mar-17-12 10:07 PM
"naughty by nature's photography/art direction upon their arrival..." Sat Mar-17-12 10:14 PM by david bammer
in many ways, naughty by nature were a pre-cursor to a lot of the cruddy inner-city east coast imagery you would end-up seeing on cover-art/music videos/magazine promo pics for the next 3 years or so.
1991 in new york city was a transitional year. you had a lot of new 90's clothing brands and styles in their infancy, but there was still a lot of leftovers that would soon be passe as hell like big gucci link chains, big ass hightop nike force sneakers and hightops fades kicking around too.
i think you can make the case that the direction naughty by nature took in portraying themselves when they came out as naughty by nature in late 1991 really was a starting point of a lot of things to follow... but ESPECIALLY what followed image-wise in east coast hip-hop in the wake of their arrival the following year in 1992.
epmd & the hit squad, kris-kross, ice cube, showbiz & ag, diamond, nas, the double x posse, of course apache and latifah, brand nubian even r&b acts like mary j blige, tlc and jodeci... the list goes on. but they all were doing things image-wise that sort of really came to a proliferation with the image direction tommy boy and naughty by nature took when they came out in 1991.
they also had one of the more memorable logos in rap history. something that reached it's zenith in hip-hop with the wu-tang clan. i'm not claiming they hold the crown of innovating that because groups like public enemy and run dmc had done that years prior and everybody had a logo in those days... however, all i'm saying is the wu were arguably influenced by naughty by nature's art direction as shown in their earliest singles and promo pics and next to the w-sword the naughty by nature bat logo is probably the 2nd hiphop logo to come to my mind from that 1992-1994 period in rap music.
i've never seen or heard anybody really give naughty by nature the props they deserve on this front. or any props for that matter anymore because of how popular they were with white audiences before that reached hip-hop journalistic acceptance in the late 90's. but their photography/art direction were innovative, influential and most importantly DOPE. they made a HUGE impact on this front only rivaled by a few elite acts in the genre who had game-changing style, imagery and art direction that re-defined everything to come after it...