How Pharoahe Monch nearly got shot at a Nas video shoot: “There was a shoot-out”
‘It Ain’t Hard to Tell’ is the last track on Nas’ classic debut album Illmatic, one of hip-hop’s most enduring and a perfect record closer
But it was also released as a single and therefore required a video. Directed by Ralph McDaniels, this promo, which sees Nas rapping to the camera in a bunch of different locations, as well as performing on stage in a club, is fun but fairly unremarkable. That is, until you learn how intense the shoot was, where people nearly died during it.
One of the people who was present on the day that they shot the video was rapper Pharoahe Monch, who revealed the madness of what happened during an interview with HipHopDX in 2021. While they were putting together the footage, he explained, an actual shooting took place, and Monch himself nearly got hit. “Ralph McDaniels was shooting it at some club, and I was off to the right side of the stage in the corner,” he recalled, “They were doing the live performance so they could get some footage for the video type of thing… And there was a shoot-out.”
This, bleakly, was not the first time Monch had witnessed something like this. “It was the second time I had seen a shoot-out inside,” he admitted before launching into how hood life had made him cautious of such situations. He may have been less fazed than most people, but only because he was focused on having the shooter within his line of sight at all times. Of course, it doesn’t mean wear your life on your sleeve and wade to the front of the gunman’s nozzle, but even when taking cover, “watch what’s going on. Be aware of everything that’s happening”, he recalled.
Despite the intensity of the situation unfolding around him, Monch claimed, “I’m not shook at all”. However, that was due to a few factors, one of course his survival instincts, which led him to not panic, and the cool head that prevailed realised the shooter was obviously in pursuit of someone specific, and he knew it wasn’t him. He noted, “It was another reason I didn’t turn my back. He literally walked up to me and had the gun in my face. In my head, I was literally like, ‘I need you to see my face’. They were like, ‘That isn’t him’.”
While he had managed to stay composed throughout, Monch admitted that, while obviously, having the gun waved in his face was really scary, a double whammy was having the cops show up after he and two others had made their safe exit. “When we leave the club, the cops pull up and they make the three of us get on the floor, face down on the cement. And they search us, which was just like, ‘Jesus Christ. First, I almost get fucking shot and now, I’m getting searched’.”
Watching the ‘It Ain’t Hard to Tell’ video now is quite something, once you know the off-screen context. It’s not at all obvious that things so nearly went catastrophically wrong during the shoot, and that innocuous video and song could easily have become notorious for entirely the wrong reason.