I have been waiting for an artist to come out with a video like this. Lupe gets it. His video is on MTV because he replicates a sound similar to a lot of popular hip hop music, but cuts out the negative clichés that constantly get replayed in the media. He frames the video “Bitch Bad” as a play where hip hop music is visually scrutinized.
The messages conveyed to today’s youth are broken down in stages, from a child’s mother to the actual rap music video. “The rap artist” is merely a clown dancing with his bling next to his expensive car and throwing down stacks of money onto his “rap video girl”.
She falls into the same role wearing wigs reminiscent to Nikki Minaj, lost in the performance linked to that of the humiliation of Blackface Minstrelsy—the only difference suggested is that the humiliation is unconscious to the performer of 2012.
Note: Lupe wants you to know where the profits to video are going…
Lupe suggests via the video that this is the greatest danger to children following hip hop culture. Boys and girls are inundated with mixed messages of sexuality, money, and success. It leaves hope that there will be a place for women in hip hop again where a female rap artist can be respected simply as a rap artist (coughs- Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Lauren Hill) and not a sexual object or product of capitalism gone bad.
Lupe is one of the few keeping a positive hip hop vibe alive. Crossing my fingers a new female rap artist will follow suit!
All music video credit/screenshots and props go to Lupe Fiasco, The Audibles, Warner Music and all affiliated.
Lana Del Rey has been making some seriously interesting videos. I don’t want this blog to be all about one artist so I’ll cover her latest video and keep it moving on to some other artists. Rey’s “National Anthem” is an interracial interpretation of the J.F.K. and Jackie O marriage. Instagram makes colors pop and fuses the J.F.K. era with modern-day extravagance in this video.
The question the viewer needs to decide is if history is repeating itself with money and power leading to the demise of the modern-day American family–or is this video hinting at interracial relations still being very taboo for Americans?
If you’ve checked out some of the racially negative comments on YouTube you would say that latter–Rey may be proving a very great point that as modern with the times as we think we are, we still have a long way to go before we can say the American Dream is attainable for all. Whether the underlying message is racially or economically driven, it is a visually sick video. Rey is cementing herself into a signature music video artist playing on the dark side of American concepts.
Beastie Boys have more than a few groundbreaking videos. Multicolored body suits,robots,enormous fake mustaches. You can’t say the Beastie Boys didn’t make their own signature style of videos. Witness the classic “Intergalactic “off the album Hello Nasty, directed by MCA himself. The Beastie Boys snuck around Japan’s subways to make this video happen. R.I.P. MCA.
I haven’t been impressed by some of the newer videos coming out so I thought why not back track to a video I had been reviewing months ago. “Hurricane” is the lovechild of a Trent Reznor, Stanley Kubrick, Doom-type production. Jared Leto, lead singer of Thirty Seconds To Mars, is video director, producing the video under the name Bartholomew Cubbins .
There are three different holy works of worship being burned in this one. That might tick some people off. There’s the gender-taboo thing with the censored images of people in the video bending the heteronormative bar for gender. If you don’t know what that means Google, Google, Google.
“Hurricane” is supposed to catch your eye. Woah, bondage exists? I shiver. Not really. I do hate promoting misogyny but I think the whole point of this video is to question what’s right and what’s wrong for you to participate in as a human being (i.e. war, sex,religion, big things). In terms of the bondage, I think they’re asking you whether you believe sex(as seen in different forms) is a carnal act or all parties are willing participants.
It also sheds light on how women are perceived as objects to a society constantly obsessed with masculine power, ignorance/misunderstanding of gender, and sex in its most basic form(broken down in body parts). All women characters represented are pushed, cornered, or placed in a position where power seems to be on the side of the male figure.
It’s loaded with things you would learn in film class–french dialogue, sharp cuts,dream concepts, intentional angles–(Don’t forget, Leto is an actor too). The overhead shot of the coffins covered with American flags is obvious code for war and questioning the purpose of war if the end outcome is that you die.
Long story short,this video leaves you with lots of questions. Are we the cause of our own greatest fears? Are we programmed to hunt, kill, and scrutinize our own kind? Is there really meaning in anything we do or are we just soulless creatures functioning instinctively on this planet??
Watch the censored version of “Hurricane” here.
*All credit of screenshot images and music to Thirty Seconds To Mars, Virgin Records America, Inc.
Drake leaves the viewer with little to follow in his “Take Care” video unless you can watch it and get past the randomness. We get the image of a dancer, a fish, a bird flying, a bull dodging arrows, Drake‘s body disintegrating, trees on fire, and Drake and Rihanna holding each other.
When I say that this video is about Y.O.L.O (You Only Live Once-from Drake’s lyrics “The Motto”) that is exactly what Drake and director Yoann Lemoine (director of Lana Del Rey‘s “Born to Die” video) are trying to get at with these images. Drake discussed how important it was that he get solid visual interpretation for the song in a recent interview with MTV. So he’s not just throwing in some animals to make himself look artsy. Or maybe he is. This stuff is always up for interpretation.The point is to look past what seems to be the abstract and realize that every living thing is connected in how birds, fish, bulls, and even the invincible humans like Drake will come to an end– it’s Carpe Diem (or Y.O.L.O if you only speak mainstream hip hop rapper talk). It serves as the visual-video-hip hop version of Robert Herrick‘s “To the Virgins, Make Much of Time.” We have only a moment to exist why not live it up and embrace love. Or in Rihanna and Drake’s case, embrace each other.
Watch the video here:
Video-meaning cheat sheet:
Trees on fire=end of living thing
Mountains=a place where life doesn’t flourish/cold and desolate surroundings(living things will die)
Dancer= movement replicating ‘dance’ of life
Fish, bull,Drake disintegrating = we all live, we all die
Dust blowing at the end of the video=end of existance, ashes to ashes, death of the living
video photo credit: still frames from Drake – Take Care ft. Rihanna (Official Video) all credit to Cashmoneypromo, artists, director
When I first saw this video I thought–how corny. But it has grown on me and it is different from the cliché videos out there showing mounds of money getting thrown on models these days. Lovefoxxx is a musician from Brasil (originally from the group Cansei de Ser Sexy) and Steve Aoki has been around for quite some time doing the electronic-DJ thing.
The concept of literally ‘imploding’ someone by making them fall in love with you at a skating rink is interesting,but it does get pretty sketch. Fake body parts get tossed around the skating rink as Lovefoxxx steals and literally destroys the hearts of all the nerdy hipsters sulking around the joint.
I hate,hate,hate the dripping,dripping,dripping part of the video. But the video is colorful, fun, and more creative than a lot of the videos I’ve been seen lately. Not that the gore+skate+dance thing hasn’t been attempted before. Robbie Williams did it in his 2000 video, “Rock DJ”. That video was beyond disturbing. No one wants to see models eating the flesh of Robbie Williams. No one.
Favorite part of the video: Steve Aoki ‘imploding’ Lovefoxxx’s heart at the end of the video.
Watch it here:
photo credit: screenshots of official video from Ultra Music
This song is blowing up. The video uses the cliché artistic-graphic theme but I decided that I like it against the concept of the song. Gotye is singing about a lost love who becomes a stranger to his life. His life is represented in the painting and Kimbra (who seems to represent his love interest in the video) fades out of the painting, losing her paint colors by the end of the video.
It’s the idea that a person can mean the world to you at a certain point in your life, so much so that you build your life (your painting) around that person and how devastating it can be when you realize they can eventually erased out of it. The quick cut to black at the end makes the message of the video simple and to the point. Nice song, nice video(minus the close-up of Goyte’s foot).
I love songs about heartbreak. They’re so good! Official throwback video for this week is Kelis’ “Caught out there”(off her album Kaleidoscope). This video slipped under the radar back in 1999, but it’s oh so fitting for Valentine’s Day. Ever been cheated on? You’ll love this one. (The video is also very lady-empowering.)
Kelis confronts her man on his infidelity and retaliates by beating the living (insert bleep)out of him. Directed by Hype Williams, the video uses camera angles to intensify scenes. Kelis is on beast mode with her rainbow fro– she’s not playing. Williams uses carnival colors,fireworks, and fired up women to make this single work.
Favorite part of the video: When Kelis says, “He’s lying”. Williams cuts to the boyfriend mouthing Kelis’ words. He becomes the video puppet. Nicely done.
I don’t think I have ever seen anger executed so well in a music video. Kelis is mad. She screams, breaks things–like her boo’s face. I love it. Happy Valentine’s Day.
In honor of one the most talented voices in all of the music industry I decided to do a throwback video on Whitney Houston’s “Heartbreak Hotel”. Most of Houston’s videos focused on her voice rather than a narrative/artistic direction. Her voice is what tells the story in so many of her videos. In “Heartbreak Hotel”, she’s confronting a cheater. I love when she throws the white fur into the ocean. This video exudes the class and sophistication that we will remember Whitney by. Rest in peace Ms. Houston!
M.I.A.’s videos are all pretty innovative. If you haven’t seen “Born Free” then you really haven’t seen a controversial video. “Bad Girls” is a good candidate for an M.I.A. interpretation of Dr. Dre’s “Still Dre”. She’s all hood with the sweats,the bling,the guns, and the crazy-driving with cars poppin’ hydraulics. The focus in many of her videos seems to become about gender and racial stereotypes, reinstating them and breaking them often simultaneously.
This video surfaced after Saudi Arabia was in the headlines for not allowing women the right to drive. There was talk in Saudi Arabia that if the ban was lifted to allow women to drive there would be, “a surge in pornography, prostitution, homosexuality,and divorce.” Say what?? M.I.A. being big on political statements it’s not hard to wonder whether she worked with director Romain Gervais to throw her two cents in on the matter.
In “Bad Girls”, M.I.A. wants you to know she can go just as hard as other rapper/artists– just in her own way. And that women can drive and do anything a dude can do just as well. It’s cool to note parts of her video that pay homage to hype themes rap artists use in their videos:
Throwing some major gats out there for you to see.
I have been waiting for an artist to come out with a video like this. Lupe gets it. His video is on MTV because he replicates a sound similar to a lot of popular hip hop music, but cuts out the negative clichés that constantly get replayed in the media. He frames the video “Bitch Bad” as a play where hip hop music is visually scrutinized.
She falls into the same role wearing wigs reminiscent to Nikki Minaj, lost in the performance linked to that of the humiliation of Blackface Minstrelsy—the only difference suggested is that the humiliation is unconscious to the performer of 2012.
M.I.A.’s videos are all pretty innovative. If you haven’t seen “Born Free” then you really haven’t seen a controversial video. “Bad Girls” is a good candidate for an M.I.A. interpretation of Dr. Dre’s “Still Dre”. She’s all hood with the sweats,the bling,the guns, and the crazy-driving with cars poppin’ hydraulics. The focus in many of her videos seems to become about gender and racial stereotypes, reinstating them and breaking them often simultaneously.
musicvideocritic 