Synopsis

Xzibit delivers his verses against a striking backdrop of a small orchestra performing on a beach. The video's grainy, blue-tinted imagery gives the classical sample a mournful, almost dreamlike quality, while a parallel street narrative suggests a robbery and its tragic consequences. Images of Xzibit in a casket add a fatalistic edge, turning the song's attack on fame, fakery and commercial rap into something darker. The contrast between orchestral elegance and hard-edged street imagery makes the clip feel both surreal and unusually somber.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video makes the song's unexpected classical influence visible: the orchestral passage is represented by musicians performing on the beach behind Xzibit. The track samples Gabriel Faure's "Pavane."

• Xzibit later said that the image of himself in a casket was his own idea. The macabre visual fits the song's distrust of fame and its suggestion that the rap business can consume the people inside it.

• "Paparazzi" was the lead single from Xzibit's 1996 debut album, *At the Speed of Life*. It became his breakthrough record and helped establish him before his later mainstream success.

• The song's instrumental was used to close "Pax Soprana," the sixth episode of the first season of *The Sopranos*. That placement introduced the track's brooding classical-rap combination to another audience.

• "Paparazzi" was also included in the soundtrack of *Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3*, released in 2001.

• The video's unusual combination of orchestral music, beach scenery, monochrome photography and street-crime imagery helped make it one of the more distinctive rap videos of the mid-1990s.