It’s easy to forget now but, in the mid-90s, slam poetry and spoken word performances were trendy for a brief time.  As with anything that was trendy, MTV had to jump on the bandwagon and ruin it through overexposure.  For a while, in 1995, every commercial break on MTV seemed to feature Maggie Estep performing.  Estep wasn’t the only performer featured, of course.  There was another poet whose name that I cannot remember.  He would do pieces about sports and how the announcers would never just tell you what the score was.  It’s funny because it’s true, right?

This video received moderate airplay on MTV and it was featured on an episode of Beavis and Butthead.  Director Mark Pellington was one of those video directors who worked with everyone.  He later went on to have a middling feature film career.

Enjoy!