Research into artist's costume

"Hip hop fashion, also known as urban fashion is a distinctive style of dress originating with African American youth on the scene of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, Detroit, Memphis, Virginia, Atlanta, and St. Louis among others. Each city contributed various elements to its overall style seen worldwide today. Hip hop fashion complements the expressions and attitudes of hip hop culture in general. Hip hop fashion has changed significantly during its history, and today, it is a prominent part of popular fashion as a whole across the world and for all ethnicities."

Rappers tend to be seen in baggy clothes, and the whole hip hop culture, much like other music genre's, has it's own specific attire, which is easily recognisable. The rapper Mac Miller once said "You can tell a Mac fan because it looks like they've watched one of my video's and been shopping!
This quote alone proves that the clothing that the artists employ is replicated onto their audience, and this further shows that these artists, as figureheads, aren't just musically infuencing the public, but are seen as fashion icons also.

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The UK Hip Hop and Garage artist Dizzee Rascal is pictured here twice during seperate performances. On both occassions, he is wearing a flat peak or 'dipsy' baseball cap backwards. This is something that is very common amongst hip hop artists. Furthermore, their is bright print on both of his t-shirts, this helps him to stand out and seem relatively out of the ordinary and unconventional, which is a catergory hip hop artists generally fit into. The baseball cap is so popular it has become a

symbol of hip hop, and can be seen on almost every hip hop artist throughout the years.

 

 Here UK Hip Hop artists 'Foreign Beggars' are pictured wearing similar apparel. Again, baseball caps and bright print t-shirts are seen.

British rapper 'Skinnyman' is seen employing the similar genre conventions again in this picture.










I think as well as using several costumes chosen by myself which will help to make my music video appeal to my target audience, it would be useful to replicate some of these looks and follow them very closely in order to bring a professional feel to my media text. I plan tpo use the streetwear look along with bright colours, and generally match all of the genre conventions.

The costume in this rap video is particularly interesting because I found it to be very 'flashy' and hit all of the genre conventions, and so I would like to replicate some of the outfits in this music video, particularly the ide of the big furr coat and flat peak cap.

I've also found that large over-ear headphones are largely associated with the hip hop music genre, to the point where a huge hip hop figurehead released his own brand of them - Beats by Dre. This has given me the inspiration to show my artist wearing over ear headphones as it is representative of the genre and would help attract a target audience.

Magazine Advert Research

To design the magazine advert for my artist, I decided to look into previously made adverts by current and previous hip hop artists, not only for inspiration, but for some kind of direction as to how to go about creating my own and making it mirror that which would be expected in the hip hop industry today.

Firstly, this one is very simplistic and yet effective. The standard font which my research has taught me is expected appears, and the basic colour scheme of blue and green creates an eye catching media text. Furthermore, genre conventions continue to be met with the idea of some kind of spray or glow in the dark paint. The chaotic appearance of it creates the unorthodox and unconventional ideology that the artist is trying to create for themselves.

However, in this one, the artist is pictured and I think that helps to make the whole thing more eye catcyhing. This is clearly created by a professional, and advertises the album very well. The spray paint idea is featured again, however the colour pallet of blues and black differs from the first magazine advert. Furthermore, advertising for social networks and media companies such as iTunes and HMV are used. This is similar to the first album cover, except that also left space for social networks such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. This is one big media network that will allow fans to come into contact with the artist himself and that will feature several kinds of advertising on his behalf. On this album cover however, the date of the album release is also featured, which suggests he is a more commonly known artist in comparison to the first one, additionally, artists which also feature on the album are mentioned.

Research into similar artist logo's

In most of these covers, Impact is used often and the fonts are usually quite basic for small time UK Hip Hop artists. On occassion there are slight effects which connote the idea of graffiti and vandalism which are usually closely linked with hip hop music, but mainly, bold and simplistic fonts and logo's are used. It could be suggested that this is used in otder to force all attention on the artist themself.

 Furthermore, it is often found that the artist features on the cover, and some kind of hood or headwear deriving from hip hop culture is also show to symbolise their acceptance within this culture. This can be seen through sunglasses, baggy t-shirts or even accessories such as DJ decks or headphones etc..

 

 

In terms of researching into artist's logo's, I think the one employed by the UK Hip Hop group 'Foreign Beggars' is particularly interesting and so I am going to research into them a little bit further.

 

This is the logo used by Forgein Beggars, and it, although making no sense, is very eye catching and denotes the typical connotations expected og a UK Hip Hop group. The anarchistic appearance of it suggests they don't fit into general society, and the dripping paint work around the whole of it also brings denotations back to the graffiti idea, and the fact that the street/urban culture all ties in together.

Again, graffiti is used in the two of these logo's which represent the group. And although several artist's similar to foreign beggars employ quite bold and simplistic logo's to catch the eye of its audience, with maybe a small amount of graffiti or suggestions of it, Forgein Beggars are consistent in using graffiti and the idea of paintwork throughout all of their logo's to give them a sense of being unique.

This logo can also be fouind on the merchandise which they sell to fans, which is a clever way of marketing themselves as a hip hop group, something which is used by artists all around the world of all genre's currently. This enforces the logo to be identified with them specifically.

Linking this image to further research I have done into the clothing adopted by the hip hop culture, they have employed similar idea's and used their logo on a t-shirt, however they have used bright colours in order to help it to appeal to their target audience.

Inspiration

Recently, I went to see the horror film 'Sinister' at the cinema. It is a dark story about a child abductor, and although its genre conventions don't follow those of rap music at all, there were some which I intend to employ in my music video. For example, the protagonist was an author, and so he spent a lot of time on his laptop writing. This gave me the idea of using close ups on technology to symbolise certain messages without physically saying them.

 

I was researching the genre generally by watching UK hip hop music video's and I found this shot very interesting, in a music video by huge UK artists Foreign Beggars and Skinnyman

 

 

 

 

Record Labels - Hip Hop

Shady Records

This is the Shady Records Discography

Dented Records

Dented Records is a record label based in the UK, and best known as the home to critically acclaimed hip-hop act Foreign Beggars and Focused Few.

Dented Records record label was established in 2003 by Foreign Beggars as a vehicle to release their own material. Tommy Evans establish the name and the brand. Foreign Beggars soon released their 1st and 2nd single "Where Did the Sun Go" and "Seasons Beatings" featuring Task Force and their debut album "Asylum Speakers" featured prominent UK rappers and several international artists, and was quoted by DJ Magazine as the Best Unsung UK Hip Hop album of all time.

Signed to Coda Agency Artists, they tour extensively both nationally and internationally to promote their releases. Tours included UK, USA, Canada, certain Asian states and many many more.

Dented Artists have collaborated with huge worldwide artists to create their unique sounds, these include names such as Ja Rule, Plan B, Wu Tang Clan and Gorillaz. These are all enormous names not only in the hip hop industry, but in the music industry as a whole, and so this is representative of how far British hip hop has come in terms of popularity.

Foreign Beggars 2nd single 'Where Did the Sun Go"

 

This is another song by 'Foreign Beggars', the craftsmen of the 'Dented' Record label.

In this music video, as well as hitting genre conventions of appearing powerful, we can see that in this Uk Hip Hop video, they use a lot more humour and tend to portray a less serious persona in order to seem easily approachable by their audience as well as taking rapping seriously. I've chosen this track because the flow of it fits with my chosen track as it is really up beat and has a high tempo, although the message being conveyed is different. Also, I really like the way that lighting is used in this video, as it varies from black and white shots, to scenes with really bold and 'in your face' colours set on a dark background which highlights the artits and maikes the video visually stimulating.

 

I have posted this video because as well as it being produced by an artist under the Dented Records wing, it is exceptionally interesting for a very low budget video. It mainly consists of shots from London riots and TV. But what is interesting about this music video, is the way that signs are used from about half way in, and messages are given through short phrases on paper, which I think it expecially effective and helps to break the video up, enforcing it to be quite visually stimulating. I would like to use something along these lines in my music video, as I think it works well here.

This is interesting for a Uk Hip hop music video, as it is clearly low budget and performed by a member of Foreign Beggars again. There are several establishing shots of the city which I think are used well as they also pan, this is mixed in with shots of performance not only on the streets, but at a gig, which I think works really well, and so I would like to employ some of these techniques in my own video.

 

Hip Hop Overview

I took some general Hip Hop research into its history from Wikipedia