Hip Hop conventions

Stereotypical hip hop conventionsGold chains- hip hop artists usually boast about Gold in there songs through mise en scene or even their lyrics, to show a sign of wealth and ‘living the life.’

Constantly referencing to women, to show the dominance of men and how they are P.I.M.P.S.

Hip hop artists boast about fast cars, revealing wealth and masculinity.

Kanye westHow Kanye’s songs fulfil conventions :

Gold digger, this represents male dominance, since he is saying ‘get down girl, go head get down’ showing women are a lower class. Furthermore portraying women to love money claiming her to be a ‘gold digger’, in effect portraying him to be wealthy.

Although Kanye West music has turned to Pop in some effects, the tone of his songs have slowed down and his lyrics are easier to relate to a wider audience. For example; Stronger

Glasses are easy to relate to a mainstream society

They background music is like techno track over dubbed, challenging the traditional conventions of a hip hop track.

Run DMCGold chains

Jerseys

Their music had a loud but friendly vibe, they where one of the main starters of Hip Hop. They set the conventions of hip hop

Hip Hop artists like to collaborate with artists from different genres, because the modern audience warm to this music. This was set from Run DMC and Aerosmith

Hats

Transformation of Run DMC hats and the present hip hop artists

Run DMC’s hats were iconic, this trend was followed by the present hip hop artists. They set the mise en scene trend of chains, jerseys and hats in motion, further emulated by the recent hip hop artists such as Jay Z, 50 Cent etc.

Run DMC were an enthusiastic band they set hip hop in a friendly motion, whereas the hip hop artists boast about girls and drugs.

Setting a bad label on hip hop

Taking away the essence of music away, with the ego.

Outkast

Political messageFriendly, setting

hip hop in a good light

Mise en scene:

The colours of the clothes are bright, which sets an positive mood.

Reflected by the lyrics and music which are a lot more uplifting than the usual hip hop song

The instruments are not usually associated with hip hop.

Sound:

The uplifting sound makes the song easy to appreciate from a wide range of fans.

The lyrics do no not boast about girls, cars and drugs. Which challenges the present day hip hop conventions This represents the

softer conventions of hip hop, since it is labelled ‘Roses’ instead of a masculine title, like ‘gold digger’

50 cent

Revealing the present convention of hip hop, being violence. This picture portrays hip hop negatively, furthermore this image is further emulated by recent artists.

Although, this isn’t the case, its just because of artists like 50 Cent portray it negatively leading to an invalid judgement by the public.

The cross is a symbolic image, which a lot of hip hop artists wear.

His music represents his ego, since he boasts about girls all the time, portraying him as an male dominant. A lot of recent hip hop artists also do the same.

His music has a slow beat to it to go with his slow paced rapping, to highlight that he is laid back.

Vanilla IceCarrying on the hat icon

Vanilla Ice like many other hip hop artists has a love for tattoos.

Vanilla Ice moves away from the reference of drugs and cars in his song ‘Ice Ice Baby’ which made it a popular song among the public.

The song had a differing backing track to the usual hip hop songs, too make it easily appreciated with it’s positive vibe.

The mainstream song reflects that if you abuse some of the traditional conventions. It’s easier to gain fans of a wider variety.

Eminem

Eminem’s music was original, setting it’s own conventions. His music weren’t necessarily about drugs cars or girls. But a wide variety.

Eminem’s sound of his songs were mostly loud and aggressive. Recording most of his songs by rapping.

His music had a wide variety of messages in his songs, he didn’t really promote his music to an main audience, which made him so popular.

Editing- matching his sound, lyrics and background music being fast, there is a lot of rapid cutting setting the ideology being rapid.