Genre and Characteristics:
- Urban area - in the 'hood' - Brings attention to the fact it's in his home town by wearing a Brooklyn hoodie.
-There are representations of a 'gangsta' lifestyle shown through people cruising in cars, dog fights, loitering, getting pulled over by police, playing basketball, guns, criminality, money.
- Street dance/freestyle
- Scantily-clad 'sexy' women - Cheap-looking, gold bikinis
- Jail scenes - all inmates are black.
- Stereotypical race representations - White gut in a suit, policeman is white, black people are jailbirds/on the streets.
- Goes against convention of representation of wealth - lacks fancy cars, clothes, bling, women etc.
- Women are only a minor element in the video - usually hip-hop videos would have more shots of sexy women.
- Shooting at the end - represents gansta cool.
Relationship between lyrics and Visuals:
- Overall images illustrate the lyrics - sometimes very literally, sometimes in a more subtle way.
- Theme of song = Jay Z has problems; video shows problems.
Examples of the lyrics illustarting the visuals:
- 'But a bitch ain't one' - female image
- 'Fast forward' - moves hand gradually
- 'Do you mind if I look round the car a little bit' - police officer goes around the car.
Relationship between music and visuals:
- The video is cut in time with the beat of the dong.
- The music is hard-hitting, aggressive-sounding with an emphasis on beat, rather than melody - visuals are also harsh = looking and edits are fast-paced to emphasise this aggression.
Influence of record label and use of close-ups:
- There are a lot 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 - he is an established artist and doesn't need much exposure.
- Jay Z has his own record label, as well as being part of Island/Def Jam - quite independent, evidence of less control by the label in this video than you might expect from a more mainstream/major label.
References to the notion of looking/voyeurism:
- Jay Z puts his hand over the camera so that it seems as though the audience is looking through his fingers.- X-ray vision shot of money in boot - we can see through the boot.
- Scopophilic treatment if the woman is quite uncomfortable to watch - seems totally unnecessary.
- Early establishing shots are almost point-pf-view, creating the impression that the audience is looking around the hood.
- Video of Jay Z outside subway station.
Intertextual reference:
- There is a video of him - possibly referencing himself?
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