Hip Hop Excells With Redundant Videos

The true test of any artist is the ability to take their skill to a level of creativity that has never been reached before. Artist who take pride in their work always want to bring their skill to the next level, they do this by finding more creative way’s to express their craft. Sometimes at the risk of losing fans and enraging critiques, but to them the ultimate goal is growth, to remain stagnant or boring is a sin that can not be committed.

When music video’s first became popular, it gave musicians the opportunity to breath life into their songs. This was amazing to both the fan and the artist because it allowed the fan to get a visualization of what the artist was saying, while the artist gets to put on a visual canvass the overall focus of their songs. Some artist have used this opportunity to express their political feelings, while others have used it to subliminally promote, than their are those who constantly push the limits with what viewers are willing to see. A great example to this is, Madonna’s controversial video to Like A Prayer, she took a song which could have been taken in many different way’s and put a video that painted although a very testy picture to the catholic church, one that showed she was not the regular run of the mill artist.

Recently popular rappers Lloyd Banks, and Juelz Santana released a song titled Beamer Benz or Bentley, which is a song depicts the rappers fat pockets, and how great they are; The song has been a hit to fans in the Hip Hop circles, and because of this a video was released.  Despite having a song where the chorus was focusing on high end cars, and large amounts of money, the rappers chose to have a video that entailed two cars but more woman than quality lyrics. Although over sexed teenagers may enjoy the video, because of the mass of under dressed women it has no point, and to be quite honest no artistic value.

It pains me to say this but video’s like this are what give the critiques of hip hop, ammunition when they declare hip hop as not being relevant as a form of music or art. This just might be an aging hip hop fan looking back at the golden ages of music video’s for my Genre but these video’s used to have a point. Yes their were always exotic and beautiful woman in the video’s but they were not the over all plot. Even Biggie’s Hypnotize which was overflowing with beautiful women had a plot.

I’m not saying that Rappers need to add a political message behind the plot of their video’s, I’m not even asking for them to transform it into a mini movie, like Lady Gaga did with her most recent video telephone. But I would like to see a video where I don’t have to question if I accidentally changed the station to soft porn. So until that day comes, this new age of Hip Hop will continue to excel with redundant flair and continue to fall further back in the race of edgy art and creativity.