Lupe Fiasco is an american rapper, record producer and entrepreneur. He rose to fame in 2006 following the success of his debut album, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor, under his real name he performs in post punk band Japanese Cartoon.
Fiasco developed an interest in hip-hop after initially disliking the genre for its use of vulgarity, this is reflected in his music as Lupe's lyrics, rather than consisting of girls, drugs and sex focus more on politics, war and peace.
I will be analysing Lupes single "Words I Never Said"
Its primarily about terrorism, the
media and taking action against the government.
Here is the video I will be looking at:
To help me break down the video I will be using Andrew Goodwins theory on music videos.
He classified music videos into 3 main types;
Literal
Amplifying
& Disjunctive
The video starts off with no music, but with
distressing scenes and sound effects of a woman being thrown around by men in a
sinister prison setting, the takes are relatively short with black intervals,
highlighting the distressing nature of the images. The colours are
subdued and vacant with a cold tone and on various close ups of parts of the
mise en scene the camera seems to jitter creating an unstable and unnerving
effect. The sound effects are blurred and sound distant as though tailored to
be in a dream sequence.
At 14 seconds the music comes in, its an electronic
beat in a minor key, which reflects the imagery very well in terms of mood and
tone. The way the music fades in is extremely important as we hear prison
sounds that seem to merge together and before we've even noticed the basic beat
to the sound is playing.
At the point at which the music comes in we see a
man watching the event unfold from the outside behind the bars to the prison
setting, we, the audience assume at this point that the man watching is Lupe
Fiasco, this gains importance as we move further into the video. The music we
hear is over the top of some of the disturbing sound effects from the woman,
which are blurred, quiet and hard to distinguish giving a creepy and upsetting
feel.
The video zooms out to reveal a piece in the
newspaper, with the headline being "Voice of the People". This small
line is a summary of Lupes lifetime musical work, he in his music aims to
project and accentuate the voice of the common people.
A piano comes in with a minor key melody but
shortly after fades out as we begin to see a woman with a strange contraption
on her head, it appears to be some kind of device design to keep her eyes open.
We the audience can assume, quite rightly that she
may be being tortured or infact brainwashed. Various sound effects and the
dark, gloomy dirty mise en scene make it appear as reminiscent of a
SAW movie, more tying in with the idea that the woman may be being tortured.
At 44 seconds the original beat comes back in and
we hear a woman singing, the voice I would say is quite muffled and gives the
impression of being slightly electronic.
We see a black male, which we will assume to be
Lupe putting on a hood get on a bus.
As he walks on to the bus he looks around and we
see various point of view shots of punters wearing small red masks over
their mouths.
If we consider this costume choice with
the headline "Voice of the People" and the lyrics "Its so loud,
inside my head. With words I should have said."
I think we can assume that Lupe has used irony to
highlight how he feels about people being gagged by
the government and that perhaps he feels the voices of the people
aren't being heard and that our independence and rights are being
taken away from us. He seems to have highlighted the fact that we as
individuals are being spoonfed information and images from
the government and that maybe we aren't even being told the
whole truth.
If being true this is a very political issue
Lupe has bought attention to in his music video that I feel that most fans on
rap wouldn't even consider to think about.
Looking around the bus we see many blurred our ages
and focus pulls, this gives a very quirky, "what is going on?"
feeling to the video. Me and Matt particularly liked this effect in
the video because we felt it was gritty and interesting.
Lupe can be seen in a low angle camera positioning in many of the scenes, this may show him as being very powerful within the enviroment.
He then starts to rap and immediately the
lyrics "I really think the war on terror is a bunch of
bullshit" are spoken, the autonomous people on the bus turn
around and we see images of the occupied Gaza Strip.
"9/11 building 7 did they really pull
it?" are some more lyrics from this verse. It seems through his lyrics and the
use of the footage in his videos he is suggesting that we have been lied to by
the government and betrayed, about specific events. As a music artist he is
standing up against what he believes is wrong and he is using his video to
highlight the extent of the problem to the audience, by using things such as
the gags, the brainwashing device and the autonomous grey colour tone.
I think that the existing footage he uses could definatly be considered
a form of intertextuality, he use's examples from other texts to help
demonstrate his lyrics and add substance to his own work. I really like the use
of existing footage in his videos, I think it definitely adds a more
real life gritty feel to his videos, by using real life examples of his points
he can connect with the audience better as 9/11 is something that has affected
us all. It means his video is much more effective and meaningful making it much
more appealing to the audience which is good because it gets his name out there
and effectively makes him more money.
As we hear "Uhh, And a bunch of other cover ups" the video goes black and white and blurry, fast moving effects are used making it hard to make out what is being shown in the video exactly, possibly highlighting the idea Lupe uses that we have been blinded and brainwashed by the government into seeing what they want us to see. The video switches between black and white and color, this makes it difficult to watch and is slightly upsetting to the eye, which is exactly what they want, they want the video to be upsetting.
Over the lyrics "Your childs future was the first to go with budget cuts" we see a very young girl with a gag on, it leads us to wonder what she may become in the future in spite of the lyrics rapped, and it seems Lupe is trying to say that its the governments fault she's never going to aspire to anything.
The cuts are fast and the takes are short the camera is hand held, this gives an amateur, more real life feel to the music video, seperating it from the polished performances from 50 Cent and Lil Wayne.
We see existing footage of protests about Gaza this is literal to what Lupe himself is rapping;
"Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say shit
Thats why I aint vote for him, next one either"
In this video we see a lot of literal interpretation yet the footage isn't so literal that it follows the songs every word, this would lead me to conclude that it is an amplifying music video as it gets across Lupes ideas and issues with perfect symmetry yet the mise en scene in the video amplify it even more, making the world seem even more shocking and terrible than it really is, or perhaps just highlighting the problem we as the human race face.
A very effective part of the video that I found extremely thought provoking was 2:12 to 2:35.
It shows Lupe being taken away by police with gas masks on, the gas masks definitely making them seem alot more threatening and frightening adding volumes to the meaning to the narrative of the song.
It leads us, the audience to conclude that he has been taken away and is being gagged because he has been using his freedom of speech to remind people of the problems we face in this world, he is telling people on the bus that the government are being lied to, and that they can't be trusted and that we should stand up to them. By having Lupe taken away and gagged in the video they are telling the audience covalently that our freedom of speech is being taken away and soon we won't have any. This sequence is distressing enough but for effect the video switches between black and white with the blurry effects on as used before, making it much more insulting to the eye and hard to watch.
I feel in this video the
production team has definitely gone for the shock factor, which
arguably is what sells the video.
He is the shown looking at what appears to be a police lineup, however it is really representations of the different countries, he raps to them and he is telling them what he thinks and is educating them on what he believes is wrong.
"Jihad is not a holy war, wheres that in the worship?
Murdering is not Islam!
And you are not observant
And you are not a muslim
Israel don’t take my side cause look how far you’ve pushed them"
Lupe is a muslim himself and it seems that in these lyrics he is telling the world
leaders that they are wrong, and that islam are not the murderers, the last
line is difficult to interpret but it seems to me its like he's blaming other
world leaders for turning the islamic government against their own people and
more importantly - Lupe. Over these lyrics we see the islamic leader leaning
over and whispering to the United States, perhaps meaning to show the
corruption in politics.
Watching him and seemingly listening to what he is saying the leaders discuss and whisper to each other, further emphasising the fact that they are keeping secrets from there own people and each other and like above, it could perhaps be showing the corruption around.
Another literal scene we see is when Lupe speaks "Ghetto" at the end of "Walk with me into the Ghetto" the camera pans across a very poor, gritty setting almost as though they are actually looking through a ghetto.
We then (at 3.05 to 3.08) see some really disturbing images of people being on
Liquor drips, I'm not sure what kind of political meaning this has but it seems
to amplify Lupes lyrics of
"Complain about the liquor store, but what you drinking liquor
for?"
This is a great amplifying example as it takes Lupes words and exaggerates
them, making them seem alot more dramatic and
frightening, definitely enhancing the gritty nasty feel to the video.
The images of people on drips are still and they have a vignette, which means
the dark corners are more enhanced, making them seem much darker and
distressing. The lack of colour and use of flash in the images makes them seem
less posed and much more real, if taken in the studio the finish would be much
more polished which just wouldn't fit in with the rest of the video.
We go back to the woman from the beginning of the video and see she is being shown images of prescription pills, chips, houses and cars, we can see that now she is being brainwashed to be like everyone else, to become an autonomous human being with no individuality or desire to be different. Lupe raps about diet soda killing of brain cells at which point we see some diet soda. The use of mainstream objects is important in this section of the video, seeing the images on screen we would think nothing of it but combined with Lupes words and the effects of the video we see them in a much different light, medicine, soda and chips all suddenly seem a bad thing. This means the video is extremely effective in what it is trying to do, by using mise en scene and interpreting it with the use of the narrative they have created a totally different meaning.
It would be great if me and matt could use our mise en scene and editing skills
to this effect as it could make our very amateur video into something
professional that's "meant to look amateur".
"I’m locked inside a cell in me, I know that there’s a jail in you
Consider this your bailing out, so take a breath, inhale a few"
These are some very important lyrics in terms of the video, as Lupe is rapping this part of the song he is shown in a jail cell symbolising the metaphorical jail inside himself. Again, although it directly decribes the lyrics I believe this is more amplifying as it takes what he says and elaborates rather than giving a basic view.
At 4.32 the music stops and we just had video, from 4.37 to 4.56 the video is
tinted red, during this time there is a fighting scene, where Lupe is attacking
the prison guards, I think in this case that the red colour connotes
anger.
At 4.56 the music joins in again with the chorus and the video returns to normal color. Apart from this I see no other distinction between Lupes verses and Chorus's. He runs in to save the girl from her torture and as he walks in and see's what is going on lots of transparency effects go on so we can see multiple images overlaying each other creating a weird, creepy, unnerving look.
They escape and we go to another scene, where we see quite a colorful image, which is a contrast to the rest of the video. A girl, who takes her gag off posts a QR for lupe fiasco on a bus. I feel the bright colours have come in now specifically so we can see that maybe the world can change and there is hope.
This QR code was shown earlier in the video, also being placed on the side of a bus, I followed the code and I was taken to a page where I could buy the CD, interesting and a very clever marketing technique. Also on the page was Lupe Fiascos manifest, mentioning a list of objectives for the world. End the glamorization of negativity in the media. An end to status symbols dictating our worth. A meaningful and universal education system. We want the invisible walls that seperate by wealth, race and class to be torn down. We want to think our own thoughts. We want Clarity and truth from our elected individuals. We want an end to all wars.
At the end he explains the meaning of his album, he exclaims that Lasers is an acronym for Love Always Shines Everytime Remember 2 Smile.
This promotes his star image as a very caring and very political person. The manifesto on his webpage definitely reinforces this. Other instances where his image shines through is in the lyrics and at the end of the video where he saves the black woman. I think this is a very valuable star image to have, rather than being a polished rapper with money and honeys, Lupe has chosen to promote himself completely differently which definitely seperates him from the crowd and makes him more relatable as a person.
