Rap Music Videos

I have decided to do a bit of research into the rap music genre for music videos as they seem to be becoming more and more popular among young people. Here are a few examples of some well known rap videos:

Lil Wayne - Lollipop

Kayne West - Gold Digger

50 Cent - Candy Shop


From watching all these videos i can see lots of elements they have in common, and which therefore must be conventional throughout the rap music genre.

Both 50 Cent's video and Lil Wayne's are very extravagant and show a very wealthy, enviable lifestyle. It is the typical lifestyle you would expect a star to have and therefore conforms to the stereotype to the audience. 50 Cent's video is set in a huge mansion which the audience would find fascinating and luxurious. We would immediately know that he is living a more privileged lifestyle than us. Also Lil Wayne's video is set in Las Vegas showing a very flash lifestyle full of money and gambling. Also it does not show a fairly ordinary holiday to Las Vegas, it instead shows an extremely expensive, outrageous one, again showing the audience that he is leading a very different lifestyle to them. Both videos encourage the audience to aspire to be like them. 

When watching all 3 videos, the theme of women in very little clothing is common throughout. All 3 videos show sexy women, dancing erotically and flaunting themselves in front of the rap star. In 50 Cent's video the entire video is based around women, with him going into a playboy type mansion and meeting them. They are all there to satisfy his needs and therefore dressed very provocatively and being extremely sexual. In Kanye West's video all the girls are imitating 80's pinups on the cover of mens magazines. Again it is using women in a very sexual way and many of them are dressed in very little clothing, posing in a raunchy way. Also once again they all seem to congregate around the star, signifying to the audience that women love him and he can have whatever he wants. In Lil Wayne's video, women are used to show off the extravaggant lifestyle he is leading in Las Vegas. They are dressed in very little and flaunting their assets. Once again they are treating Lil Wayne as if he is a god and would do anything for him. They are all very sexy and use this sexuality to entice the audience to watch the video. 

In all three videos the rap star is made to seem like the most important thing with the camera constantly cutting back to MS and MCU of them rapping in amongst the other images. Also they are all dressed very lavishly, with 50 Cent dressed in a chinchilla coat, Lil Wanye with a huge diamond necklace and Kanye West in a shirt and trousers. It draws all the attention to them and makes them the central point of the video, despite so much other action taking place.