Stars: De La Soul, Jodeci, Usher, Deborah Cox, Brian McKnight

Summary: To celebrate its 20th Anniversary, MTV has compiled dozens of the music videos which have aired on the ubiquitous music cable channel. This particular collection is devoted to both slow jams and fast ones, and includes diverse videos which span across the urban genres of soul, R&B, and hip-hop. Not only is the music topnotch, but the actually videos are considered to be some of the most groundbreaking ever aired on the network. Fifteen videos are included, among them Digable Planet's gorgeous black-and-white Rebirth of the Slick (Cool Like Dat), De La Soul's classic Me, Myself and I, and Run-DMC and Aerosmith's hilarious meeting in Walk This Way.

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20 Jams is a selection of videos that stretches back to the earliest days of hip-hop, through to contemporary 2001 R&B. Interspersed with period examples of MTV links, it showcases the music channel's extensive coverage of black music, albeit after a slow start. Run-DMC and Aerosmith's superb "Walk This Way" is a kicking start to this compilation, a mid-80s first contact between hip-hop and heavy metal, with the video demonstrating Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and the laceless Adidas boys coming to a working understanding that would prove massively influential. The awesome but often overlooked Eric B & Rakim follow up, before De La Soul's mellow and colourful "Me, Myself and I" heralded another radical shift in hip-hop story, wittily going back to a classroom setting to teach us the new style.

Digable Planets and a George Clinton-like Humpty Hump offer their own stylistic divergences but then, as the video enters the 90s and beyond, it concentrates on some of the blander, less inventive, pop tendencies of R&B: Juvenile offers us every video cliché in the book; Monica's offering is visually drenched in the soft, dreary beige of her soft, dreary, beige ballad; while Method Man's interview segment, "You gotta make it look good ... nice and presentable ... sell more albums", is in miserably stark contrast to the invention of the hip-hop pioneers. Thankfully Erykah Badu, playing the role of harassed housewife-cum-diva in the video to "Rimshot", redeems the next generation. --David Stubbs

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Interviews, Original MTV Commercial Bumpers, Artists Profiles, Selected Discographies, Fast Facts And Short Statistics
Subtitles:	French, German, Italian, Spanish
Year:	1981
Release Date:	September 24, 2001
Runtime:	74 minutes
Certification:	Exempt.
Catalogue Number:	I X 9814 M W U K D
Keywords:	Music, Mtv, Rock, Pop, Performing, Arts, Popular, Jams
Genre:	Music/Performing Arts