DMX - Stop Being Greedy (BET, Final Revision)

JUL 01 1998 · 12:00

DMX - Stop Being Greedy (BET, Final Revision) (1998) Director: Nick Quested Era: Late-90s East Coast Hip-Hop Renaissance (1998) - Peak era of hardcore rap's mainstream crossover, coinciding with DMX's quadruple-platinum debut on Def Jam/Ruff Ryders High curatorial value as a confirmed-director, broadcast-specific archival revision of a landmark 1998 hip-hop single. The BET Final Revision designation makes this a rare distribution artifact documenting the censorship and formatting pipeline that governed hip-hop's mainstream broadcast era. Nick Quested's involvement connects this video to a critically significant body of late-90s hip-hop visual work. The Chester, NY location photography and dual-persona staging elevate this beyond standard performance-format contemporaries. Context: Released in 1998 as the second single from DMX's debut studio album It's Dark and Hell Is Hot on Def Jam Recordings and Ruff Ryders Entertainment, 'Stop Being Greedy' arrived at a pivotal moment for East Coast hardcore rap. The album sold 251,000 copies in its first week and is widely considered a classic of the genre. The BET Final Revision designation situates this artifact within the broadcast infrastructure of Black music television, representing the era when BET served as the primary curatorial and promotional platform for hip-hop artists. The dual-conscience lyrical concept, DMX performing two warring internal voices, reflects the album's overarching spiritual and psychological themes, and the video's rural New York setting (Chester, NY) departs from traditional urban street imagery, lending the production a gothic, cinematic quality consistent with the album title It's Dark and Hell Is Hot. Director notes: Quested directed 'Stop Being Greedy' in 1998 as part of DMX's debut album campaign for It's Dark and Hell Is Hot on Def Jam/Ruff Ryders. According to Slate, Quested conceptually split DMX into two on-screen figures to visualize the song's dual-conscience narrative, a good and bad self battling for supremacy, and incorporated a manhunt sequence in the woods. The video was shot on location in Chester, New York, utilizing the old MSB bank and the Glenmere Mansion as key production settings. This was among Quested's most significant early hip-hop video commissions, produced during his formative late-90s music video period before his transition to war documentary filmmaking. The filename designates this as the 'BET, Final Revision,' indicating a broadcast-specific edit prepared to BET network standards.