Music Videos analysis

You and I-John Legend

This music video is a very positive and inspiring video for women of all ages, shapes, sizes, ethnicities,etc.  It represents a variety of women and girls and connotes that all women regardless of what they look like, their age, where they are from, etc are beautiful regardless.  It also shows the vulnerability of females, it makes the audience intrigued as to why these women are all of a sudden being depicted as so sad.  Very few men are shown in this video, except to show that they are supporting the females.  There is mostly use of full body and portrait shots, to mainly show facial expressions to evoke the desired emotions from the audience.  The lyrics of the song go in perfect harmony with the visuals of the video.  Overall, connoting that regardless of how women are viewed or depicted or the pressures that society tries to place upon us, we are all unique and beautiful.  This is the empowering of women.

Badiah-Nailah Blackman ft shensea
https://youtu.be/6VrmWNfVh4M
This song is of the category of Soca.  It main purpose of creation is to not only make money and fame, but to contribute to carnival.  It promotes that women at carnival should enjoy themselves, and dance as they see fit to the music, and not to just stand there and watch, but to let the music free them.  Overall, it is a very fun song, that empowers caribbean women not to feel ashamed of their culture and to not be afraid to embrace it.  During the majority of the video, it is  set in a night time/ evening setting, to make it more seductive to encapture the embodiment of how carnival or caribbean dancing is in the way that they are dressed and dancing.  It also shows parts of what living in the Caribbean is like.  This is more of a grey area, can be seen as both empowerment and exploitation.

Crossover-Tommy Lee Sparta ft Sean Kingston
https://youtu.be/XG7Kbr3sJaM
This music video essentially shows the "thug life" side of things.  That once you are in the game and involved in that related lifestyle, you must have loyalty to your "niggas".  This encourages young men to envision this lifestyle as something to aspire to, especially as you see they are smoking weed, lots of money and lots of women.  This also reinforces the stereotype that black men are already represented as.  The dim lighting also connotes to the darkness of the deeds that they are committing.  overall, the music video holds a negative connotation although it could be bringing to light the issues that young men are faced with to survive in their own community.  Also, the women in This video are being exploited rather than empowered as all of them are depicted as strippers.