Just in time for the release of Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze is getting a big retrospective at MoMA. It’s a well-deserved moment of recognition for Jonze, who, despite having directed a few great films, is still probably best known for his music videos. Jonze’s videos, made mostly in the 1990′s, are some of the most enduring artifacts of the decade. The signature motifs of Jonze’s videos - irony, nostalgia, and humor, all held together by a seemingly effortless lo-fi look – have been so thoroughly absorbed by the mainstream that it’s hard to remember a time when these things weren’t an accepted part of the cultural vernacular.

Of course, the 90′s were not just about grunge and indie rock. The 90′s were the era of hip-hop’s ascendancy, when rap was transformed from fringe genre into the dominant form of pop music. And it was Hype Williams, the decade’s most prolific video director, who almost single-handedly established and raised to the level of art nearly every visual icon we associate with hip-hop today. The money, the cars, the girls, the clothes – Hype Williams did it all first, and better, than just about anybody. And he’s still going strong today.

It’s worth noting first that Williams’ videos are very obviously a product of their time. This is not to say they look dated, because many of them hold up well. Rather, it’s that the videos work in retrospect as documents of hip-hop’s ascent throughout the decade.

As rappers became richer and more flamboyant, so did Williams’ videos. In 1995′s “Big Poppa,” we see what would today be considered shamefully modest displays of wealth (at least for rappers) – a few bottles of Moet, a climactic hot tub scene featuring the artist formerly known as Puffy and some bikini-clad babes. Kid stuff by modern standards. Contrast this scene with Mase’s “Feel so Good,” from only a few years later. It’s Bad Boy Takes Vegas – there are helicopter flyovers, elaborate choreographed dance routines on the Vegas strip, and wads of cash being tossed around like the worthless currency in post-WWI Germany. Rappers are out of the hood, and they have money to burn.

But Williams’ videos were not explicitly about conspicuous consumption. Williams was a master of understanding and highlighting the essential characteristics of the artists he worked with. He worked again and again with the same artists - R. Kelly, Aaliyah, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Kanye West, to name a few – and the videos he directed were as essential to the arc of these artists’ careers as the music they made.

Williams, of course, had some well-established calling cards – the fisheye lens shot, the coked-out ultrafuzz lights, the supremely oiled up bikini models. (Williams explains the reasoning behind some of these recurring images here.) But to focus on those aspects alone is to ignore the sheer breadth of narrative and visual styles on display in his videos. At the height of his powers, Williams could direct something spacey and insane like Missy Elliot’s “The Rain” along with a truly gritty video like DMX’s “Get at me Dog” – in the same year.

Williams popularized narrative and a cinematic scope in hip-hop videos. You can see this in R. Kelly’s “Down Low” or Nas’s “Street Dreams,” which manage to tell complete stories in five or six minutes. Williams was also one of the first prominent video directors to experiment with CGI. There were some notable missteps along the way here, but one can see by the time of Kanye’s “Drive Slow” and Lil’ Jon’s “Snap Ya Fingaz” that Williams had refined computerized graphics to the point that they were tight, evocative and, frankly, awesome.

The music video, of course, is basically dead. Never again will we see multimillion dollar epics featuring Danny DeVito. But we undeniably live in a world that’s been influenced by the music video. Spike Jonze is at MoMA now. And Hype Williams is everywhere else.