8 Iconic Things From ‘90s Music Videos You Can Still See in New York City

In the ‘90s rappers turned this world famous park into a freestyle rhyming laboratory with hungry street poets venturing down to get into the cypher. Run-DMC christened the park when they made it one of the locations for their 1986 video “Who’s House.”

One of the entrances to Brooklyn’s famed Prospect Park. When youngest-in-charge rapper Special Ed wanted you to know you were in his beloved borough, he featured the landmark arch in the video for his 1990 classic “I Got it Made.”

This landmark that connects Brooklyn to Manhattan continues to be one of the sites of NYC just as it was in 1993 when A Tribe Called Quest featured it in the video for the single “Electric Relaxation.”

Basketball legends from Julius “Dr. J.” Erving to Kobe Bryant played on this hollowed sports grounds. And street legends still play there today. The iconic playground was featured in Diamond D’s 1992 video for his hit “Best Kept Secret.”

The subways are the lifeblood of NYC and along with seeing the occasional strange happenings you can also still witness dancers busting mind-blowing moves on the train. Cypress busted more than moves on the subway in the video for their 1991 cut “How I Could Just Kill a Man.”

Just as it has provided a historic stage for Black entertainers over several decades, the Apollo Theater has been a key venue to feature note-worthy hip hop acts….Like this 1996 gem of Sean “P. Diddy” Combs performing with Mase and the Lox.

The famous "Bed Stuy — Do or Die" mural made one of its first rap video debuts in the politically and socially conscious-rooted video, "Fight the Power," by Public Enemy in 1989. The mural was first created for Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," film and is without a doubt an iconic landmark in Brooklyn to this day. The characters reflect the neighborhood's multi-ethnic residents, while the slogan reps the neighborhoods infamous rep for playing no games.

If you ever watched Nas’s 1996 video for his collab with Lauryn Hill “If I Ruled the World” you would see a parade of NYC’s famous yellow cabs. Although ride share behemoths like Uber and Lyft have taken a large chunk of the transport business, you can still hail one to put you in a New York State of mind.