Codes and

Conventions
Of Rap Music

MisEn-Scene
The costume of a musician from the rap genre is
stereotypically a man/female in expensive clothing eg
sportswear which is usually in a specific colour to represent
the gang they are from and they are usually presented
sporting giant gold chains and lots of money. Most rappers
are endorsed by a specific sportswear brand eg Meek Mill
With Puma or Rick Ross with reebok. This conforms to Richard
dyers star theory as the recording artist is represented to be
perfect, this makes the audience aspire to be like the artists
in the video. According to barthes this generally connotes to
the audience that they are rappers indexically links to wealth.

Mis-En-Scene

Meek Mill Monster Video

shot inside a club

Location A typical rap video location is stereotypically

shot in an urban rundown area, in clubs, in fancy
mansions or inside strip clubs and cars. This is
indexically linking back to the wealth of a rap artist and
the materialistic life that is connoted to the audience.
But also, shots of rappers In The Hood to signify to the
audience where the rap artist came from and where he
is now through being a rap artist within the hip hop
genre. This appeals to the target audience especially
A BossMeek Millas
Hood
to signify
the demographicImof
aspirers
it Video
shows
that no matter
to the audience where meek mill has
what situation you
dream.
comecan
from achieve
then above ayour
different
location
with expensive chains to signify what he
has achieved.

Mis-En-Scene
Lighting most videos from the rap genre are filmed
with low key lighting and desaturated filters, this
connotes to the audience how the rap genre came from
the urban streets of America during the poorest times in
the 1970s. It also signifies a form of escapism as the
rapper in the video has a low key lighting or
desaturated filter to connote the urban decay of their
city but are presented with upper class attire and
expensive sports cars to show how they escaped the
setting they were living. There is usually a clear
juxtaposition switching from high key to low key lighting
and saturated gradients to show highs and lows of the
genre.

Shots
A lot of rap artists within the genre use a range of
montage shots to also pay homage to some of the
greatest rappers to ever live, or they remake a video
including the rapper to pay homage, this breaks the
conformity of the competitive video style of
performance based shots and
shows how even rappers
Here is the notorious BIG music video for MO
aspire to be like other rappers.
Money Mo Problems which was released off

his debut album life after death, the song also

features P.Diddy who recreated the video in
2009 and pays homage to BIG within the
video by using multiple shots of him in the
video.

Video Styles
Performance based
A performance based are used to promote the artist.
Stereotypically the artist uses a lot of hand gestures and
cocky movement to connote to the audience that they
are dominant and they are the best artist there is, since
rapping started competively between two artist battling
each other. Many rap videos conform to the performance
based
with
Here thevideo
rap artiststyle
is clearly
in themany
center ofmid range and close up
the midof
shot
showing
he isshowing
the dominanthow
male they are dominant in the
shots
the
artist
figure in the shot, showing he is the main
rap
genre
character.
Thehierarchy.
fact his body language is
holding up the gun fingers indexically links
back to the competitiveness of the rap genre