10 Utterly Outrageous Music Videos That Caused Major Controversy

6. Hate Me Now - Nas

There's a fairly well tried and tested way to ensure you royally upset everyone in the world - it's called blasphemy. Regardless of your belief system, criticising the religious establishment in any way is a good way to ensure controversy, especially if your target is Christianity, and you use a crucifixion motif (just ask Monty Python.) The rapper's agenda was actually quite justified:

"There's a play in New York City where a black man played Jesus, and caught a lot of flak. I think, even the mayor at the time, Giuliani, was against it. So my thing was I wanted to be crucified like Jesus in the video, to get back at all those people that don't want to see a black man doing his thing."

So it was provocation for political reasons, but it still upset a lot of people, including Puff Daddy, who appeared on the track and was crucified in the video, before consulting his pastor and demanding the shots be removed. That was duly done, but the wrong edit was sent to MTV and aired in 1999, prompting Puffy to lose his head, and storm Nas' studio to hit manager Steve Stoute over the head with a champagne bottle. As you do.