Tuesday 26 November 2013

Textual Analysis - B*itches Love Me - Lil Wayne ft. Drake, Future

To what extent can it be argued that contemporary hip hop music is a negative influence on its target audience?

Being a very sexual song with provocative lyrics such as 'I got some down b*tches I can call', 'B*tches Love Me' is also a very controversial song. It highlights the typical negative stereotypes of a rap music video talking about the main things within any other negative rap video such as women for sexual satisfactions and drugs; which in this case is 'Kush', a type of weed. 

The first example of this cleverly lyrical song, portraying rappers such as Lil Wayne in a negative light is one of his lyrics of 'Can't treat these h*es like ladies, man...' connoting putting a negative view on women overall not to look at them as 'ladies' but to view them as 'h*es' with an overall lower domination compared to the male gender. 

Furthermore, the camera work within this particular music video is very quick moving, showing-off a range of shots some of which include having a montage of shots all throughout the video showing multi-narratives to the audience and still allows the audience to follow what is going on within each scene. Many close ups of Lil Wayne's face to emphasise the words he is saying to the camera are used such as curse words or any clever lyrics phrases that he is using. Long shots are used to get the full view of Lil Wayne sitting on a bed surrounded by women as well as many mid-shots used for Future and Drake as they are standing up singing into the camera.

As the women within the music video are seen to be portrayed as 'animals' as throughout the song they are referred to as 'bitches' meaning dogs, this shows how overall, Lil Wayne, Future and Drake are dominant over these women displaying them within the lower spotlight compared to the other gender. Due to this negative representation overall of women, they are made to look like snakes wearing rubber/latex bikinis which are colourful and appealing to the viewers. As the music video has a lot of colours such as yellow, blue and red, the contrast with that is that the lighting for the music video was also very low-key, setting the scene and connoting mystery. 

The sound used within the music video was mainly diegetic sound due to the music; being a music video. For the editing of the music video a few fade outs were used whilst putting the camera on the different artists such as a fade out from Lil Wayne's frame leading to a fade in, into Future's frame whilst it was his turn to sing when Lil Wayne's verse finished. Furthermore, the song was promoted by Cash Money Records,Young Money Entertainment and Republic records which, having a big name helped to sell the music video and due to the video having three contemporary favourite rap artists of the music industry. 

Also, this video leads to people talking about the sexual exploitation of women within the video wearing less clothing and it being very tight in order to lead to the sex appeal of more people, males in particular, being attracted to watching the video. The factor of 'dumbing down' the lyrics of the song such as mentioning typical representations of a rap song having factors such as drugs, alcohol and 'b*tches' reinforces the stereotypes of a typical rap video. 

Furthermore, binary opposition, plays a big element within the video as due to both of the sexes of both males and females. For example, the domination of males is portrayed throughout the music video as the females are caged up like animals and are heavily made over to look like animals to look like snakes as this leads to the personification of animals turning into humans. 









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