Synopsis

Inside an uncanny domestic apartment, mechanical mannequins and disembodied robotic limbs jerk, spin, walk, and dance in time with Herbie Hancock's groundbreaking electro-funk instrumental. Everyday objects and household scenes become strange kinetic sculptures, creating a surreal, slightly unsettling world where human movement is replaced by machinery. Hancock appears only briefly on a television screen, playing keyboards, while the video puts its focus on the animated figures and the song's innovative combination of jazz, hip-hop scratching, and electronic rhythm.

Factoids & Trivia

• The moving figures were created by British artist and inventor Jim Whiting. His constructions gave the video its distinctive mixture of sculpture, machinery, and human-like movement.

• Herbie Hancock appears only on a small television set within the apartment. This was a deliberate choice: Hancock later explained that he did not want the clip to be presented as a conventional video centered on a Black performer, at a time when MTV's exposure of Black artists was still very limited.

• Columbia Records reportedly did not initially understand the track and would not provide a video budget. Hancock therefore pursued the project himself, helping bring the song to MTV through its unusual visual concept.

• The video received eight nominations at the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984 and won five trophies, including Best Concept Video, Best Art Direction, Best Editing, and Best Special Effects.

• "Rockit" helped bring turntable scratching and hip-hop production techniques to a much wider pop audience. Grandmixer D.ST's scratching is a central part of the recording, which was produced with Bill Laswell and Michael Beinhorn.

• The song's success was closely tied to the clip's heavy MTV exposure. The track came from Hancock's 1983 album "Future Shock," a project that marked a major move away from his earlier jazz-centered image toward electronic and hip-hop-informed music.

• Hancock's Grammy performance of "Rockit" in 1984 echoed the video's mechanical aesthetic, using robotic figures and a prominent DJ setup.