Passin' Me By

Passin' Me By is a single released by the West Coast rap group the Pharcyde in 1993, and it was the music video and song that made me fall in love with hip-hop. If you haven't listened to it, watch the video below, and maybe listen to it again, and look up the lyrics?

There is a dreamy, woozy quality to the camerawork, with the camera slowly panning in on people, often in the manner of someone leaning in and out whilst having a conversation with the person being filmed. Several sections have half of the action upside-down and half right side up. The black and white looks great, as it did then. At the beginning, it almost seems as though the focus could be voyeuristic, but the slight movement of the camera from time to time and the unhurried transitions create a feeling of polish, but not perfection. There are several clever shots where we don't easily know what we've just seen and have to either wait for it to be revealed, or work it out by rewinding.

I don't remember exactly how old I was when I saw this video, but I remember where I was. I would have been at youngest 5 or 6 years old, and we were in my uncle's home. He lived relatively close by, but we didn't visit often, because he had had a stroke and was bedridden and could no longer communicate verbally. I remember in my child brain, this made total sense - of course, he can't talk and that's why we don't visit him that much. I had no concept of when he had had the stroke, because it had happened when I was very young or before my birth.

We went upstairs to the bedroom where he lay and my parents spoke to him while I sat at the side of room, barely understanding what was going on. I think some of my siblings were there, but not all. My child brain registered this all as Necessary, but it wasn't interesting to me. After we had spent a certain amount of time with him, we went downstairs and passed into a living room where MTV Base was on. Oh, MTV Base, I miss the days of it. I was never a child who had MTV or any of the associated cable channels, because my parents would not allow it. By the time they came round to satellite TV, I was 18 or 19 years old and had the Internet.

This music video began playing, and the look of it - the black and white, which was so unlike what was trendy at the time, the people walking upside down - caught my attention. I became slowly more and more enthralled, and then when the chorus kicked in, the saxophone was a lightning strike to me. I felt it in my whole body, and I must have noted the song title on screen, because I never forgot the song. It was a successful song, and so I am sure I heard it here and there subsequently as well. My recollection is that I was able to watch the entire music video because it didn't involve any nudity/kissing and so nobody took objection to it despite my family being very religious/conservative.

Once I got old enough to start accessing and using the Internet, I found the song again and this time I was able to find out more about the Pharcyde and look up the lyrics to this song in particular. Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde will always be one of my favourite albums, regardless of how problematic some of it is and the fact that Kanye West apparently also cited it as one of his?!!! It is recognised as an iconic hip-hop album, and the fact that it is a debut album is something I always find difficult to believe because it is so good.  

Passin' Me By was the Pharcyde's biggest hit, and frankly, when I listen to it again, it's obvious why. Other than the production, which still sounds fantastic, the song is a rendering of male sorrow and disappointment that is like nothing else I've ever heard, especially not in hip-hop. From the '90s onwards, the expectation for how women would be discussed in hip-hop songs was low for me and many other female fans. I got used to effectively ignoring the misogyny and the constant use of the word 'bitch' as well as the two-dimensional emotionality about women wanting his money/being groupies/being jealous/being shallow/etc. 

This song recounts how each of the men is desperately in love with a particular woman - Bootie Brown's teacher, Slimkid3's childhood friend Shelly, Fatlip's 'dopest Ethiopian' and we never learn the identity of Imani's lady love - who they will never be able to have or who has rejected them. The raps and vocals express deep sadness, disappointment, resignation and powerlessness... but they are never bitter. Never is the woman a 'bitch' for being out of reach, or subjected to any other degrading epithets. The saxophone adds a beautiful sorrowfulness to the rap and vocals, and even the ad-libs involve some sighing at times. 

When you watch the video, this dimension is even more apparent in the individual, close-up shots of each of the group. They are not feigning untouchability, nor are they angry - their faces express grief and disappointment. Even the lines 'I won't have no more of this passin' me by' and 'By letting her pass, I proved to be a better man' carry no bitterness, entitlement or superiority about them. I don't hear them and feel that this is a man who's going to become an incel and/or abuse a woman. They sound young, like inexperienced men trying to convince themselves that they will survive the rejection. They are comforting each other in a display of male solidarity that is not at the expense of women (for once!).

Take this vocal section, which is famous for its sampling in Joe's 2001 single Stutter:

"My dear, my dear, my dear
You do not know me, but I know you very well
Now let me tell you 'bout the feelings I feel for you
When I try or make some sort of attempt, I simp
Damn, I wish I wasn't such a wimp
'Cause then I would let you know that I love you so
And if I was your man, then I would be true
The only lying I would do is in the bed with you"
Then I signed: "Sincerely
The one who loves you dearly
P.S. Love Me Tender" 

 But the letter came back three days later: "Return to Sender"
Damn... 

Oooof! The sincerity with which this is delivered gets me in the gut, compounded by the way Slimkid3's voice becomes more ragged as he cries 'She keeps on PASS..ing me by!' at 4.20 in the video. It's noteworthy that Joe sampled the first 2 lines of the section above, for a song that is accusing a woman of being a liar and cheating on him, which is much more in line with what I would come to expect of commercially successful '90s/2000s R&B and hip-hop songs. I resented the fact that Joe had taken a beautiful moment of vulnerability from a hip-hop song and turned it into a song about triumphantly accusing a woman of cheating.

There is a sense of erotica in the shots of the woman's mouth kissing a man's body part (I think it was the shoulder, and later, the head) and we understand from the woman in the minidress and the woman who dances that women can be sexy, but there isn't a side order of misogyny with that. The women are not stupid or hateful because they are sexy. They come across as mysterious objects of desire, but not only objects of desire - they are shown in scenes where they are participating in life, not just performing as sexual objects. They aren't 'video girls' and I'm not judging video girls when I say that, but it is a choice that is effective because not only is it more humanising, it is true to the song. Despite all the references to sex, the song is really about first loves, which for most men (as for most of us) are rooted in proximity. All of us when young fall for people who aren't 'for us,' for various reasons, and that for me is one of the things that makes the song brilliant. If there were video girls in the music video, it would feel completely inauthentic to what is being expressed.

The other great part of the music video is that it shows the members of the Pharcyde as just normal young black men. They don't really fit into the gangsta rap/baller/flossing tropes of black men that were ubiquitous at the time (and still are, but were especially so then because it was still new). Yes, they play basketball and drive around, but that is not the focus of everything. They're not trying to signify wealth and status constantly. It feels almost as if they are part of a well-made video diary in which a group of friends try to unburden themselves of grown-up sadness whilst also goofing around, doing push-ups and living their lives. They desire women but don't seem to hate them, and even the references to sex feel like a cishet male way of trying to process love for women in a way that will be understood by their cishet male peers. Even as they mess about, their eyes are eloquent with heartbreak. It remains a masterpiece for me, although I recommend listening to the whole album. Otha Fish follows straight after, which would be released later in 1993 and is effectively the sequel to this song, but more ostensibly upbeat and unfortunately includes the word 'Bitch'...