Biography

Hype Williams is an American film director, film producer and screenwriter. Williams attended Adelphi University. He first displayed his work by tagging local billboards, storefronts, and playgrounds using HYPE as his graffiti tag. His graffiti style was influenced by artists like Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat. His big break came when he began working with Classic Concepts Video Productions. Lionel C. Martin and Ralph McDaniels created Williams' first opportunity with the Filmmakers With Attitude moniker (FWA), which was Williams' first video company. Williams has received numerous awards for his video work include the Billboard Music Video Award for Best Director of the Year (1996), the Jackson Limo Award for Best Rap Video of the Year (1996) for Busta Rhymes' "Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check", the NAACP Image Award (1997), the 8th annual Music Video Production Association Award for Black Music Achievement (1997), MTV Video Music Award in the Best Rap Video (1998) category for Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy wit It", MTV Video Music Award for Best Group Video (1999) for TLC's "No Scrubs", and the BET Award for Best Director (2006) for Kanye West's "Gold Digger". In 2006, Williams was honored by MTV with its Video Vanguard Award, presented in honor of his achievements as a filmmaker. Since 2003, Williams has adopted a signature style combining a center camera focus on the artist or actor's body from the torso upward and a solid color background with a soft different-color light being shown in the center of the background, so as to give a sense of illumination of the background by the foreground subject. This has been displayed in "Gold Digger" by Kanye West, "Digital Girl" (Remix) by Jamie Foxx and "Video Phone" by Beyoncé.