While preparing a review of Beyoncé’s new album I Am… Sasha Fierce for our friends over at The L Magazine, I’ve been playing the “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” video nonstop. 48 hours and 952 viewings later, I realize that beyond the hot moves and nifty camera tricks, its hypnotic power comes from being shot in black and white. To discover how many other musicians have harnessed the power of black and white for their videos, I propose the following Listicles original: a far from comprehensive Top 5 Music Videos in Black and White.

5: Craig Mack featuring Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, Rampage and Busta Rhymes, “Flava in Ya Ear Remix”

Long forgotten (mainly because he’s a terrible rapper), Craig Mack’s brief career yielded one amazing song that was really only good because of the guest appearances. With its various performers prancing and clowning against a white background, the “Flava in Ya Ear” video is also something of a prototype for Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” clip.

More black and white videos and, unbelievably, more from Craig Mack after the jump.

4: G. Dep featuring Ghostface, Craig Mack and Keith Murray, “Special Delivery Remix”

How fitting that Craig Mack would only resurface in 2001 for a video that essentially updates the “Flava in Ya Ear” look for another Puff Daddy protégé who amounted to nothing, G. Dep. Again, the guest appearances are the best thing about the “Special Delivery” video, and not just Ghostface and Keith Murray stealing the show, but also when Craig Mack rhymes “Terrordomes” with “Mel Gibsones”. Get back in the vault, Craig.

3: The Smashing Pumpkins, “Stand Inside Your Love”

The Pumpkins have made a few videos eligible for this list (“Disarm” comes to mind), but “Stand Inside Your Love”, with its German Expressionism pastiche speckled with perfectly congruent goth fashion points, meshes historical and contemporary black and white styles into a delightfully macabre love story (and we’ll just pretend the few seconds of color never happen).

2: Bjork, “All is Full of Love”

Chris Cunningham’s cyborg sex mini-epic has some very colorful lens flares, but for all intents and purposes it’s a black and white music video. As such, it is among the coolest videos around, and proves my theory regarding Iceland’s dodgy financial situation: they’ll be fine, they have the world’s most advanced robotics industry.

1: No Doubt, “Hella Good”

In addition to the awesome sonic meeting of No Doubt and the Neptunes, the “Hella Good” video is basically the highlights from Waterworld, and it’s so much more entertaining than that big-budget belly flop. Seriously though, all they’re doing is jet-skiing around a harbor and partying in some sort of shipwreck squat, but, to paraphrase Jon Stewart in Half Baked: “Have you ever jet-skied around a harbor and partied in a shipwreck squat… in black and white?”

Honorable mentions: Michael Jackson for the title and theme of “Black or White”, a-ha for the animated sequence in “Take On Me” and Gnarls Barkley for the trippy seizure-sparking second half of “Run.”