Common – BE, music video essay

The reason for choosing this particular text was because of its sense of
motivation. It allows the audience to “aspire” to something and therefore is
uplifting in its nature. I found the video on YouTube although it is fairly hard to
find otherwise, as we could perhaps say that it is not suited to a mainstream
audience and is considered more “underground” and not well known to the
majority. The video is highly influenced by “black history” which is noted in the
lyrical aspects of the song, although we are put into a world with the culture of
Chicago being strong, if we look at the iconography of the text, such props as the
“air jordan1’s” are a creation of Michael Jordan amongst garment being worn in
the form of product placement, although if we look at the text from a “non-
marketing” perspective such props / clothing is used to relate to its primary
audience, which is of course people living in Chicago.

The text is of a hip-hop genre, we can certainly assume this from the location that
is shown in the establishing shot, also the suburban feel of the video relate to the
genre well. However this is where the regular conventions stop, normally a rap
song would show a clear relationship between the lyrics and visuals although
this video uses this convention in a more abstract or subtle way, perhaps down
to its motive of being uplifting it sets itself apart from most rap videos in the way
that the actual song is different to most and therefore a “different” video would
work in harmony to make the text successful. It also avoids being to cliché
compared to most hip-hop music videos.

Aside from what the video denotes, there are in fact intertextual references that
would need additional research to figure out. I discovered that the ending shot is
an adaptation of “ A Great Day In Harlem “ by an artist called Art Kane; the piece
of work is a photo of a small community sitting outside a typical “Harlem” house
that is recreated well in order to give an “edge” to the video as well as a credible
artistic reference. In terms of the video performance there is a narrative
structure made up of Common showing his “brotherhood” amongst friends and
family as well as a reference to what I assume to be his own childhood, however
being that it is fairly short for a music video it still allows the audience to in a
way “escape” into the narrative.