Pioneers of the rap/hip hop genre

Rap music first started on the streets of the bronx in new york, the music origanally stemmed from American music and poetry, the poetry at the time had a significant effect on starting the civil-rights movement in America, the poetry eventually evolved into music and became increasingly popular with the rise of block parties in which a whole community would be involve, Dj's at block parties would isolate the percusion breaks of popular soul and funk songs and the rap artist (or MC) would rap over the beat.  In the 1990's rappers such as Tupac Shakur (who is also considered to be one of the greatest rappers who ever lived) and his rival Biggie Smalls (Notorious B.I.G) helped to propell the expansion of rap music around the world with hits like "Dear mama" and "Juicy". Eventually in europe hip hop started to evolve from underground music into the mainstream audiences. In Europe rap music was the domain of ethnic internationals and immigrants. In britain rap music was evolve into a sub-genre called grime. Grime started on the streets of east London and for a number of years was exclusivley produced in London by artists known as Wiley and Dizzie Rascal who have now brought grime more into the mainstream and have now manageded to spread grime to America and have started collabarating with American rappers.

Reviewing early stages

When we were first presented with songs to make a music video for by our teachers, the song we ended up using (Broken Silence) was not an option. When we first heard the options presented to us by the teachers me and my group were feeling not only dissapointed but nervous because there were no songs we could see ourselves making a music video with. i believe this was the case because the teachers were not aware of the music we were into (grime/rap). This may have been the case because of generational factors, or cultural factors. However we confronted our teachers about the problem we had and they were very willing to allow us to use a song which woulkd allow our creativity to be exploited to its maximum level.

Issues with the genre

The grime/hip hop genre has come under scrutany from the government because some of the music steming from it has been said to contain violent and vulgar lyrics that encourage gun and knife crime and gang culture among specifically the black youth. The goverment ran a taskforce called operation trident to tackle this problem, operation has recently been highlighted within the grime community for intefeering and trying to dilute the harsh lyrics of a popular grime artist named "Giggs" also known as "Hollowman". Operation trident has been critised for restricting the freedom of speech of the grime artist and thus holding their carrer movement back. The artist Giggs was prevented from touring the UK by the police and operation trident, and as a result it has caused a sense of resentmen towards the police and trident frome grime/rap fans. The police and operation Trident have been recently critisised by the guardian newspaper for cancelling Gigg's U.K tour and have said that the police and trident should be asking grime/rap artists to speak out against gun/knife crime instead of cancelling shows.

Analysis of a music video

  This is the music video to the song "brenda's got a baby" by the american rapper (who is also seen as one of the greatest if not the greatest rapper of all time by fans of rap and hip hop) the song is about many of the stuggles of living in an area rife with poverty and crime, this song is also based on true events. This music video is heavily dominated by narrative,it does show performance from the artist 2pac but it is intertwined into the narrative, this inspired us in the creation of our own music video and we decided to make a music video also heavily dominated by narrative. This song also has a serious political message which is similar to the message which is being conveyed in our song "Broken Silence". Our song broken scilence also refers to true event and so we thought it would be wise to use some of the techniques used in this music video. The lyrics in this song are directly portrayed visually which helps to add effect and power to the lyrics and the message conveyed. An example of some more similarities between our video and the video for "Brenda's got a baby" are we had a main protaganist which we were taken on a journey through their life with and both main protaganist  became victims to crime

Inspiration for digi-pak

The mane influence for our digi-pak design was a design used in the album "Play time is over" by the artist wiley. We used the artist wiley because he is of the same genre of music as the music in our music video, he is also very popular and one of the top artists in his genre so we thought it would be wise to exploit some ideas he has used. In our picture we took at the graveyard we tried to capture darkness simalarly to this however our music group has a different message, therefore there were bound to be difference, for example instead of having just the items in the photo dark we shot the picture in a dark atmosphere to represent the message of a dark and dangerous society which is being portrayed in the song. We also changed the location from a playground to a  graveyard which are to completely polarised places, this also helps the message of a dark broken society to be delivered.

Myspace

We have put up some binus videos on the myspace of our music group first genesis, for their fans, this is very common with the artists of thye genre group our music group is part of, we thought this was a good idea because it creates a stronger connection between our music group to their fans, it also gives the artists the oppurtunity to gain feedback from their fans and create material accordingly

Final Filming

We are planning to have completed filming our entire music video  by saturday, its going to be emotional because we've put our heart and souls into this project, hopefully it all goes as planned and after that we can start editing and start to put form to our music video.

Bonus videos for our artists myspace

We decided to shoot a behind the scenes interview of our artists, we thougt this was a good idea because it allows our artists to connect with their fans, the artists talk about their inspiration of their song and the message they are trying to convey.

On set on the grave yard scenes

We doing some more filming of our music video for our new single Broken silence on saturday, we're looking forward tot this and we hope we please our fans, the video has a deep message just like the song does. This is a picture of us on set, filming the graveyard scene, this picture is also going to be on our digi pack.

Digi-Pack shoot on 3/11/10

We started to film the bonus features of our music group, we shot a behind the scenes interview of the music artist, we did this for our artists to help promote their new album and also to connect more with the fan base. The artists also had the oppurtunity to give a message to the fans that they felt was important which is also the message in the song 'Broken Silence'.

location

we have chosen a location in the south wimbledon estates we have chosen this location because we think it can reflect the gritty hard lifestyle over our main protagonist and the hard life he is going through. Another location we have decided to use is a friends room who is also a teenage boy as the protagonist bedroom which reflects his youth but however some sequences in his room we show that he isnt innocent by showing various sucpicious items in his room. we have also decided to use an alley way in south wimbledon which our protagonist gets murdered, we have chosen this location because alleyways are sterotypically known to be dangerous even thought we are going to be filming in the day.