The two music videos I will be comparing is All Eyes on Me by AKA and Pop That by French Montana. The striking similarity in both videos is appalling. Both music videos take place at a mansion. Both videos feature scenes in an outdoor pool as well as scantily clad women. In addition both videos show an abundance of name brand alcohol. This could be due to endorsement deals which highlights the topic of the commodification of hip hop we covered in our class readings. Ciroc Vodka for example is featured in the Pop That music video there is a part where the camera even zooms in on it. The content of the music primarily talks about women, money, and partying. The music doesn’t provide actual substance or talk of anything of meaning. Both songs are clearly meant for party music.
A great amount of the United States rap scene is made up of a type of “fast rap” rap music that is catchy and has a killer beat, but two weeks later is considered old and not played in the club/party circuit any longer. I think that this extremely common of rap music in the US especially “trap music” or “turnup music” It is important to be aware of the quality of these songs, even if the beat and production of the song is great the lyrics or message might not be.
One difference that I did find in the videos was the tone of the videos. Even though both videos featured the same concepts the way these were executed were very different. For the Pop That video the whole song seemed natural and an actual party the women in the video were playful and even running across the camera during a rappers camera time. For the All Eyes on Me the women in the video were careful to keep their distance and not interrupt that rapper’s camera time. They were featured as props rather than the main source of video entertainment. In the Pop That video I would argue that the rappers relied heavily on the influence of the women to make the video entertaining.