Sunday, 18 September 2011

Jay-Z 99 problems Analysis




Genre Characteristics
  • urban setting-Brooklyn-'Jay-Z's Hood' drawn attention to the fact it's on Jay-Z hoodie
  • Represents gangster life style-cursing in cars, dog fights loitering on streets, pulled over by police, basketball, guns, street dancing/free style, criminality/money
  • Scantily clad 'sexy' women- cheap looking, gold bikinis
  • Jails scenes-all inmates are black
  • Stereotypical race representation- white guys in suit, policeman is white, black people are jail birds/on streets
  • Goes against convention of representation of wealth- lacking fancy cars, clothes, bling, women
  • Shooting at the end-reflects image of cool gangster image

Relationship between lyrics and visuals
  • From the 'hood' - Jay-z pulls hood down
  • 'Radio' image of radio
  • 'bitch' image of women
  • 'Jay-Z' image of himself
  • 'Fast-forward' moves his hands along to demonstrate
  • 'Paparazzi'- camera flash image of criminals identity shots
  • overall images illustrate lyrics-sometimes literal or subtle way, theme of song= problems Jay-Z has 
Relation between music and visuals 
  • Video is cut in time with the beat of the song
  • Music hard hitting, aggressive sounding with an emphasis on beat rather than melody-visuals are so harsh looking and edits are fast paced an emphasis on this aggression

Influence of the record label  and use of close ups
  • Lots of shots of Jay-Z- not all close ups but there are some
  • Close ups of other men as well- aggressive looking
  • shots of women are long shots/mid shots- because they're not important
  • Less emphasis on Jay-Z on his own as he is already an established artists and doesn't need as much exposer
  • Jay-Z has his own recording label as well as being part of Island deaf Jam- quite independent, evidence of less control by the label in this video than might expect from a mainstream/major label
Reference to notion of looking/voyeurism

  • Jay-Z  puts his hand over the camera so that is seems as though the audience are looking through his fingers
  • X-ray vision shot of the money in the boot
  • Scopopille treatment of women in quite uncomfortable to watch- seems unnecessary
  • Early establishing shots are almost point-of-view, creating the impression that the audience is looking round the hood

No intertextual references could be seen.
  

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