Everlast - What It's Like

JUL 01 1998 · 12:00

Everlast - What It's Like (1998) Director: Frank Sacramento Era: Late Alternative Boom (1998) - Post-grunge/rap-rock crossover era defined by genre-blending artists emerging from hip-hop into mainstream rock formats; peak MTV TRL and modern rock radio dominance High curatorial value as a defining artifact of the rap-rock-blues crossover era, offering a rare example of socially conscious narrative structure within mainstream MTV rotation. The video's combination of performance, triptych storytelling, and surrealist underwater sequences represents a sophisticated visual approach uncommon for the period. Its chart dominance (9 weeks at #1 Modern Rock) and cultural longevity, including continued reference in social justice contexts, make it essential for preservation as both a musical and sociological document of late-90s America. Context: Released July 1998, 'What It's Like' arrived during a pivotal moment in American alternative radio when hip-hop artists were successfully crossing into rock formats. Everlast, formerly of hip-hop trio House of Pain, used the song and its video to reposition his identity around blues, folk, and rock while maintaining hip-hop cadence. The video's social realist imagery of poverty, marginalization, and class invisibility resonated with a post-grunge audience attuned to authentic working-class narratives. The song reached #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart for nine weeks, underscoring the broad cultural receptivity to its message. The video reinforces the song's lyrical structure, three vignettes depicting an unhoused person, a woman seeking an abortion, and a drug dealer, through its parallel editing and empathetic camera work, making it a notable artifact of late-90s socially conscious MTV-era video production. Director notes: Filmed in Los Angeles. The video opens with Everlast performing in a desert setting beside an abandoned bus. The narrative follows three characters experiencing hardship, reflecting the song's lyrical empathy structure, and culminates with those characters gathered outside a window as a comfortable family dines indoors, oblivious to those outside. A surreal underwater performance sequence is intercut throughout. Released 1998 on Tommy Boy Records for the album 'Whitey Ford Sings the Blues.' The rapid editing pace (avg shot length ~2.0s, 138 scene changes over ~276s) produces a kinetic intercutting rhythm that mirrors the song's shifting character-verse structure.