Evaluation Q1

Before creating our music video we conducted research into rap artists and their brand identities. From this we then established a list of conventions of the Hip Hop genre that we could either develop or challenge. We found genre conventions from analysing products in our genre like Logic's Under Pressure and looking at how other white rappers like G-Eazy's image is presented. I think that we subverted many of the traditional Hip Hop genre characteristics but conformed to some of the lesser known genre characteristics. 

Style of our music video:
After hearing Buried Alive by Logic, our chosen song, it was obvious that we could use the title to base the music video on. As well as matching the title of the song, basing our music video on being buried alive fits in with the Hip-Hop genre as darkness and death are often themes in Hip Hop songs.

Our visual moodboard

As you can see from the visual mood board I made we drew inspiration from moguls of Hip Hop such as Eminem and Kendrick Lamar but also smaller artists like Logic.

Narrative of our music video: 
Typically Hip-Hop music videos do not contain a lot of narrative and are usually based on performance. However similar artists to ours like Logic and G-Eazy music videos both consist of performance and narrative hybrids. So we decided after research to make our music video a hybrid of performance and narrative.   

G-Eazy's music video for single 'I Mean It' sees him in the role of a news presenter, which forms the basis of the narrative. As he plays the news reader and himself, as the interview is ongoing he begins to rap parts of the song which form the performance side of the music video.

G-Eazy combing narrative and performance

Logic's music video for his latest single 'Young Jesus' is also a hybrid of performance and narrative. As he plays many different characters like a chef, shown below, and later on a police officer and news witness. But in between all of these roles he lip syncs parts of the song.

Example of Logic combining narrative and performance 

After doing research and seeing similar artists like Logic and G-Eazy music videos it became obvious that the vast majority of them were hybrids. So we decided to conform to current Hip Hop genre conventions and make our music video a hybrid of performance and narrative.

Balance between narrative and performance

Consumption Habits: 
One of the purposes of a music video is to be entertaining and be interesting enough to watch repetitively. As our music video is a hybrid of narrative and performance we couldn't keep our audience entertained with just narrative. So after doing our research on UK Hip Hop artists we identified that to make their music videos as interesting as possible they use a large variety of locations in comparison to other genres such as Pop and Rock. Below is an example of a UK Hip Hop artist, Nines, using lots of different locations to keep the viewers interest on a performance based music video.

The music video contains in total fifteen different locations. In comparison our music only has seven different locations but we used lots of cuts to keep the video interesting similar to Nines music video however the song is slower and therefore there are less cuts in Nines video than in ours.

Music video for Nines (UK Hip-Hop artist) 'Can't Blame Me' 

Album cover:
The main functions of an album cover are:

• Providing information about the music and the production of it
• Giving the audience a suggestion of what the music is like and what genre it is
• Acting as visual advertising, usually being the primary form of advertising aside form social media and tour dates poster
• Having sentimental value to fans and the auience

Above are some debut album covers from white UK and American Hip Hop artists. Although as you can see the album art varies from artist there some characteristics which are identical. For example the album name is always in bigger font than the artist name, in this respect we conformed to our genre as we have done the same with our album cover.

Our album cover

As you can see we took inspiration from our visual moodboard when creating our album cover. Below is an annotated version of our digipack cover. Which shows in what ways we conformed and challenged Hip Hop genres.

Website:
Our website in our marketing campaign for iSO plays a vital role, as it's purpose was not only to promote the artist but also the record label and the products. The presentation below explains in what ways our website conforms to and challenges the Hip Hop genre.

Genre Characteristics: 

iSO as an artist largely challenged genre characteristics, as a new artist it is important to challenge conventions especially as iSO is somewhat of a niche artist, A UK white rapper.