The MTV Video Music Awards are still a month away, but Beyoncé is already ruling them. She leads the 2016 VMA nominations—just announced this afternoon—with a career-high 11 nods. That’s ahead of runner-up Adele, who has eight, and includes a Video of the Year nomination for Lemonade’s audaciously provocative curtain call, “Formation.” On August 28, we’ll see whether the actual Moonmen line up accordingly.
If this year’s VMAs turn out to be another coronation for Queen Bey, “Formation” director Melina Matsoukas should also be considered for royal status. A longtime Beyoncé visual collaborator, Matsoukas has been here before, winning Best Video With a Social Message in 2014 for Beyoncé’s “Pretty Hurts”; the Matsoukas-directed clip for Rihanna’s “We Found Love” won Video of the Year at the 2012 VMAs and went on to win a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video.
Along with Video of the Year, “Formation” is also up for Best Pop Video, Best Choreography, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and—specifically in recognition of Matsoukas’ role—Best Direction. The nominations arrive just before what’s sure to be a big fall for Matsoukas, as she moves towards TV: She’ll direct several episodes of Issa Rae’s new HBO comedy, “Insecure,” based on Rae’s essential “Awkward Black Girl” webseries.
Beyond “Formation,” Matsoukas’ highly stylized videos for Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Ciara, Kylie Minogue, Lily Allen, and more have often put big ideas in service of depicting each star as a glamorous boss. “Females are victimized and made to feel ashamed of their bodies, or they can’t be smart and beautiful, and I try to work against that,” Matsoukas told Pitchfork in December 2011.
Here are seven videos that trace Matsoukas’ impressive ascent.
Snoop Dogg, “Sensual Seduction” (2007)
Beginning in 2006, Matsoukas established herself working on videos for Ludacris, Ne-Yo, Beyoncé (of course), Leona Lewis, and Eve, the last of whom reportedly introduced her to Snoop Dogg. Snoop clearly had no shortage of memorable videos, dating back to his early rise with ‘90s West Coast gangsta rap, but the Matsoukas-directed clip for “Sensual Seduction,” from 2008’s Ego Trippin’, just might be his finest. At the height of the Auto-Tune craze, the grainy visuals paid stylish homage to an earlier era of robot-voiced funk singers like Zapp’s Roger Troutman. Happily, the “Sensual Seduction” phenomenon also led to a full-fledged collaborative album by “Snoopzilla” and present-day funk explorer Dâm-Funk, 2013’s 7 Days of Funk.
Lady Gaga, “Just Dance” (2008)
Add to Matsoukas’ accomplishments that she also directed the very first official Lady Gaga video. The clip for The Fame single “Just Dance” is modest by both artists’ later standards, with a simple house-party setting, but it successfully introduced Gaga’s Bowie-inspired theatricality. (Sidenote: Whoa, who else totally forgot about Colby O’Donis?) The video has garnered more than 200 million YouTube videos, and it quickly led to another Matsoukas-directed Gaga clip, for fellow Fame cut “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich.”
Ciara, “Work” [ft. Missy Elliott] (2009)
Before “Work From Home,” a more famous “Work,” or even “Work B**ch” came this brash Ciara-Missy team-up from 2009’s Fantasy Ride. While Ciara’s made more memorable albums, far less forgettable is the Matsoukas-directed video for “Work,” which finds Ciara masterfully leading an all-female construction crew as Missy MCs nearby. The clip exemplifies Matsoukas’ knack for capturing virtuosic dance routines in a bold light—a trait she demonstrated again in the iconic intro to another Ciara video, “Gimmie Dat.”
Lily Allen, “Not Fair” (2009)
Lily Allen goes country? For another example of how Matsoukas inventively draws from vintage styles, her clip for this single from the British singer’s It's Not Me, It's You LP seizes on the song’s country-tinged gallop the way “Sensual Seduction” went all-in on Auto-Tune. Here, Matsoukas inserts Allen into Porter Wagoner’s long-running country variety show, complete with an amusingly bored-looking country-western backing band.
Rihanna, “We Found Love” [ft. Calvin Harris] (2011)
Other than Beyoncé, the pop star who has most often served as the muse to Matsoukas’ lens is Rihanna. The two worked together on videos for Rated R’s “Hard,” “Rude Boy,” and “Rockstar 101,” Loud’s “S&M,” and Talk That Talk’s “You Da One” and “We Found Love.” It was the last of these, though, that still towers over both collaborators’ videographies, with Rihanna recently reuniting with Calvin Harris on “This Is What You Came For.” Matsoukas has said the turbulent relationship in the video wasn’t meant to refer to the singer’s past with Chris Brown, but there’s a realistic magnetism between Rihanna and co-star Dudley O’Shaugnessy that transcends. Shot in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the clip also presages how Matsoukas would introduce songs with cinematic opening segments, in this case evoking the rave-era recklessness of Trainspotting.
Solange, “Losing You” (2012)
Already a fixture on Beyoncé’s sets, Matsoukas first directed the younger Knowles for 2009’s “I Decided” video. Where that clip was a high-concept, time-traveling affair, their reunion on “Losing You” uses a lighter touch to achieve maximal feeling. “It was sort of a grab a camera and let’s go moment,” Solange said of the clip, which was shot in South Africa. The stunning, sun-drenched clip shows Solange dancing alongside members of the chic Le Sapeurs subculture, and proves that for all the filmic grandeur Matsoukas can bring to a video, she also knows when to sit back and take more of a documentary-like approach.
Beyoncé, “Pretty Hurts” (2013)
The link between Matsoukas and Beyoncé traces back to a handful of 2007 videos, including the ’Yoncé-swaggering, gold-drenched visuals for her Jay Z collaboration “Upgrade U.” On 2013’s Beyoncé, a “visual album” that certainly lived up to that billing, the “Pretty Hurts” video still managed to stand apart. Stretching the original three-minute song into a seven-minute short, Matsoukas spares no excruciating details in her attempt to show, as she once told MTV News, “all the pain and struggle that we go through as women to maintain this impossible standard of beauty.” Harvey Keitel guest stars as our Miss Third Ward’s sleazy pageant-host interlocutor. The trophy-smashing, toilet-hugging, scalpel-baring clip opened the way for Bey and Matsoukas to venture into yet bolder territory for “Formation,” their eighth collaboration overall.