Monday 25 November 2013

Media Magazine

1) Music is one of those things in life that we all interpret differently. It has the power to bring people together whilst simultaneously segregating us. This is more apparent in the social networking world of harsh tweets and hashtag battles fought by rival fan bases – the ‘Chris Brown vs Tyler The Creator’ Twitter feud exemplified this. - Talking about how social networks which the younger generation mostly uses starts wars using twitter to show favouritism within who the fans of either Tyler The Creator or Chris Brown is better than the other.

2) Thanks to YouTube, you can revisit the press conferences and see how painful it was listening to their misinterpretations. Sites such as Rap Genius allow the public to suggest the meaning behind song verses of any genre. - Misinterpretations of rap are usually what helps to portray artists of being negative however, beneficial websites such as Rap Genius explains what each sentence actually means so that the misunderstandings and the negative portrayals of artists disappear. 


3) The elder generation have an inclination of blaming rap for much of the violence that goes on within the younger world. - Links to my critical investigation of negative portrayal of contemporary artists one factor being violence. 


4) However, rather than viewing this imagery as misogyny, it could be argued that Eminem is ridiculing them in a bid to show us how unrealistic some modern representations of femininity are: robotic, aggressively sexual and objectified. - Ways in which artists are negative within the rap and hip-hop industry such as Eminem having negative qualities such as objectifying women within the music industry such as Kin Kardashian for example. 


5) Eminem entwines his voice with a myriad of voices from popular culture. His intertextual links to other voices are firmly entrenched in his work casting a shrewd eye over the banality of contemporary culture. 

-Eminem: hip-hop’s Lord of Misrule

6) The media obsession with female celebrities and their weight is mocked through the use of a chubby Jessica Simpson look-alike singing whilst munching on a hamburger, whereas the Sarah Palin impersonator (played by an apparently well-known porn actress) could be seen as showing us the commonly-held belief that women are only seen to be creditable if they can be sexually objectified. 

-Eminem: hip-hop’s Lord of Misrule - Linking back to the point of objectifying women to make men look more dominant and superior over women. 

7) Indeed, looking at some aspects of his life and work it is almost impossible to refute these allegations; his venom-fuelled tirades against his ex-wife Kim are legendary, whilst his own mother launched a $10m lawsuit against him for using the lyrics ‘my mom smokes more dope than I do’ on the hit ‘My Name Is’.

-Eminem: hip-hop’s Lord of Misrule - Showing the negative lifestyle of Eminem's life before he was famous and talks about drugs and violence linking to his wife and all of the negatives that he has done within his song about his wife called 'Kim' projecting all of his intense hatred and anger towards his wife spitting spiteful lyrics such as 'Bleed, bitch! Bleed!' being a sense of violence as throughout the song he talks about slitting her throat continuously. 

8) Though hip-hop is now a dominant force within mainstream youth culture, with artists such as Jay-Z or the British Plan B finding success far beyond traditional rap/r’n’b audiences, the stereotypical ‘rapper’ exists in a largely fixed form in the public consciousness.

 - Odd Future, Stranger Past – Issues of Representation in Contemporary Hip-Hop 

9) As the popularity of the genre grew, however, there also rose a dominant stereotype among hip-hop artists, and by association of young black males; traditionally masculine, unemotional, aggressive, violent and often misogynistic. - Odd Future, Stranger Past – Issues of Representation in Contemporary Hip-Hop - The negative stereotypes of hip-hop artists of being young and black being violent is currently very dominant in music with artists such as Chief Keef being a classic example of being a negative influence for it's target audience encouraging them to treat women disrespectfully labelling them with nicknames such as 'bitches' and 'hoes' and also encourages people to be more violent using power phrases such as 'bang bang' being a major trend within today's society. 


10) Odd Future... Most of the press coverage surrounding the group has focused on the deliberately shocking nature of their lyrics, with graphic violence, homophobia, misogyny and references to suicide and rape. 

Odd Future, Stranger Past – Issues of Representation in Contemporary Hip-Hop - OFWGKTA being a prime example of being a very negative influence towards their target audience and mainly the contemporary more younger generation of people and linking to Alvarado's theory talking about black people being violent, humorous and pitied.  

11) What Odd Future do is push the violence and aggression common in hip-hop’s representations of young black men to its logical conclusion. Even then they could be seen as using the stereotypical violence of the lyrics as a window to an introspection and vulnerability similar to that seen in the work of Childish Gambino.
- - Odd Future, Stranger Past – Issues of Representation in Contemporary Hip-Hop

12) In his solo work, Tyler, the Creator hints at honest psychological wounds. Lines such as
'let’s buy guns and kill kids with dads and mom, and nice homes with 401Ks and nice-ass lawns'
express real hurt, venting the jealousy of an alienated kid still stinging from the rejection of an absentee father. 
 - Odd Future, Stranger Past – Issues of Representation in Contemporary Hip-Hop











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