Andy Baker on his favourite music video, a super-smooth animation for Slick Rick

This week it’s the turn of enormously gifted freelance animator and illustrator Andy Baker to show us his favourite music video, and with a bulging portfolio of experience in 2D animation and character design (see here, here and here if you don’t believe us) we were expecting great things. Andy did not disappoint; here’s his tribute to a suitably smooth lo-fi animation for Slick Rick’s 1994 hit Behind Bars which is now happily soundtracking our Monday morning.

Andy Baker: Slick Rick – Behind Bars (1994) directed and animated by Sash Andranikian

Produced in 1994 when Slick Rick was in prison for attempting to murder his cousin and bodyguard, Behind Bars is my favourite use of animation in a rap video. There was a lot of pretty budget animation in hip hop videos in the early 1990s (and the not strictly hip hop but completely insane Eddie Murphy and Michael Jackson seven minute wonder that is Whatzupwitu) but even today there’s something really refreshing about watching really, really well drawn animation on paper; it’ll always beat anything else for me. Behind Bars was also animated in the studio owned by Mark Zander, son of Jack Zander – one of the original Tom and Jerry animators. How good is that?!