Codes and Conventions

Of Rap Music

Mis–En-Scene

• The costume of a musician from the rap genre is stereotypically a man/female in expensive clothing eg sportswear which is usually in a specific colour to represent the gang they are from and they are usually presented sporting giant gold chains and lots of money. Most rappers are endorsed by a specific sportswear brand eg Meek Mill With Puma or Rick Ross with reebok. This conforms to Richard dyers star theory as the recording artist is represented to be perfect, this makes the audience aspire to be like the artists in the video. According to barthes this generally connotes to the audience that they are rappers indexically links to wealth.

Mis-En-Scene

• Location – A typical rap video location is stereotypically shot in an urban rundown area, in clubs, in fancy mansions or inside strip clubs and cars. This is indexically linking back to the wealth of a rap artist and the materialistic life that is connoted to the audience. But also, shots of rappers ‘In The Hood’ to signify to the audience where the rap artist came from and where he is now through being a rap artist within the hip hop genre. This appeals to the target audience especially the demographic of aspirers as it shows that no matter what situation you can achieve your dream.

Meek Mill – Monster Video shot inside a club

Im A Boss- Meek Mill Hood Video to signify to the audience where meek mill has come from then above a different location with expensive chains to signify what he has achieved.

Mis-En-Scene

• Lighting – most videos from the rap genre are filmed with low key lighting and desaturated filters, this connotes to the audience how the rap genre came from the urban streets of America during the poorest times in the 1970’s. It also signifies a form of escapism as the rapper in the video has a low key lighting or desaturated filter to connote the urban decay of their city but are presented with upper class attire and expensive sports cars to show how they escaped the setting they were living. There is usually a clear juxtaposition switching from high key to low key lighting and saturated gradients to show highs and lows of the genre.

Shots

• A lot of rap artists within the genre use a range of montage shots to also pay homage to some of the greatest rappers to ever live, or they remake a video including the rapper to pay homage, this breaks the conformity of the competitive video style of performance based shots and shows how even rappers aspire to be like other rappers.

Here is the notorious BIG music video for “MO Money Mo Problems” which was released off his debut album life after death, the song also features P.Diddy who recreated the video in 2009 and pays homage to BIG within the video by using multiple shots of him in the video.

Video Styles

• Performance based A performance based are used to promote the artist. Stereotypically the artist uses a lot of hand gestures and cocky movement to connote to the audience that they are dominant and they are the best artist there is, since rapping started competively between two artist battling each other. Many rap videos conform to the performance based video style with many mid range and close up shots of the artist showing how they are dominant in the rap genre hierarchy.

Here the rap artist is clearly in the center of the mid shot showing he is the dominant male figure in the shot, showing he is the main character. The fact his body language is holding up the gun fingers indexically links back to the competitiveness of the rap genre and how everyone is trying to be the greatest.