Goodwin's Music Video Analysis

 
1: Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics
The video for '99 Problems' shows many Hip Hop genre characteristics: Firstly the setting, a ghetto in Brooklyn, New York. NY is a hotspot for Hip Hop culture with other rap artists such as Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan coming from there. The people in the video are black and some are shown as criminals, this is a genre characteristic because in Hip Hop music and the videos, the people in them are often shown committing crimes or being accused of them. There is also genre characteristics in the costume where people shown wearing tilted baseball caps and chains. The video also contains street-dancing/break-dancing which is a characteristic of the genre.

2: There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals
In the video, the police try to search Jay Z's car, he talks about this in the lyrics of the song. He also shows in the video black people as the criminals and the police as white people which links to the race issues he talks about in the song. There is also a lyric where Jay says "Half a mil' for bail 'cause I'm African" and there is an African tribal man dancing in the video. Jay Z says "Paparazzi with the cameras, snappin' them" when people are having their mugshots taken.

3: There is a relationship between music and visuals
The song is quite aggressive so the video is more fast paced and in time with the track. The video is also shot with a hand-held camera in black and white to create a grittier, "street", feel. There is also a scene with a dance group, dancing to the music.

4: The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recurs across their work
There are close ups of Jay Z to represent him as a symbol of his hometown, we constantly see him wearing Brooklyn clothing and NY Yankee caps. We also mostly see him from low angles making him seem like an important figure.

5: There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particular voyeuristic treatment of the female body
In the music video there are many provocatively dressed women who appear as "eye candy" for the men.

6: There is often intertexual reference
The video contains no interetexual references except for maybe Hip Hop culture or New York/Brooklyn culture in general.