Synopsis
The Beastie Boys take over New York's Times Square, performing directly into the camera as the city rushes around them. The video uses rapid edits and rotating, bullet-time-style camera movement to turn the trio's performance into a kinetic street spectacle. Towering billboards, passing crowds, bright commercial signs, and flashes of surreal imagery create a restless urban backdrop. The playful presentation contrasts with the song's serious lyrics, which address gun control, racism, war, political dishonesty, and the need for people to work together.
Factoids & Trivia
- The video was filmed in Times Square, allowing the Beastie Boys to perform amid a dense background of recognizable advertisements, news displays, and corporate branding.
- Its rotating camera work and frozen-motion transitions give the performance a bullet-time appearance, echoing the visual language popularized by The Matrix.
- Kermit the Frog can be spotted on a billboard in the background. The brief appearance is one of the video's recurring visual jokes.
- "Right Right Now Now" was released as the third single from the Beastie Boys' 2004 album To the 5 Boroughs.
- The song is one of the album's most explicitly political tracks, with lyrics referring to school shootings, gun control, racial profiling, American military action, the Ku Klux Klan, and false political narratives.
- A live performance of the song, recorded at Madison Square Garden on October 9, 2004, was included in the Beastie Boys concert film Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!.
- The video was among the Beastie Boys clips remastered and released in high definition in 2020.