Watching their Souls Speak: Childish Gambino, Kendrick Lamar, Beyonc - PDF document

Watching their Souls Speak: Childish Gambino, Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé Knowles- Carter, and the New Aesthetics of the Hip Hop Music Video Whereas music video scholarship up to this point has reflected larger aesthetic trends, it has neglected to appreciate the rich diversity of hip hop music videos. For example, the essay collection Music/Video: Histories, Aesthetics, Media, is comprised of works that either analyze single music videos or seek to establish methods of analysis that could be used across the board. Carol Vernallis’s book Experiencing Music Video also works towards the latter, once again leaving out the possibility of aesthetic differences between musical genres. While this is clearly not an exhaustive list of all music video scholarship, I have found that it is nonetheless representative of a larger problem. In this presentation, I will argue for the need to discuss music videos in tandem with their associated musical genres left by presenting analyses of three hip hop music videos that highlight aesthetic trends I have observed within works by exclusively hip hop artists. In working towards this goal, I draw from and build upon the work of scholars of black art and hip hop such as Tricia Rose, Cheryl Keyes, Henry Louis Gates, and Angela Davis. Music videos are typically thought of as subordinate to the song they accompany; however, this is a pervasive gross generalization which likely stems from their origin as promotional tools to bolster record sales. Hip hop artists took hold of the

music video early on and, over time, have transformed it into their primary mode of artistic expression. The three works I will analyze here, being Beyoncé’s audiovisual album Lemonade, Childish Gambino’s track “This is America,” and Kendrick Lamar’s track “HUMBLE.” exemplify this transformation to an extreme. I have identified three specific aesthetic criteria that these new music videos employ, thereby asserting the artistic importance of the music video as both a historicist and socially relevant art form. (It is also not surprising that since the start of this project last fall, hip hop music videos that conform to these criteria have rapidly grown in number, for example, Janelle Monae’s Emotion Picture Dirty Computer , Tierra Whack’s track “Mumbo Jumbo,” Beyonce and Jay-Z’s track “APESHIT,” Gambino’s track “Feels Like Summer,” etc.) These new aesthetic criteria are as follows: 1. Each work has a distinct civil-rights-minded message. 2. Each work plays with the anchoring of sound within the world it presents, and this has a profound impact on the video’s possible messages. 3. Each work is markedly historicist through constant visual and audible signification (as discussed in the Gates) and iconic memory (as discussed in the Keyes). When taken separately, these criteria are present throughout the history of the hip hop music video. However, by way of combining these three, these videos “are wholesale pieces of art in which the visuals and music are fundamentally inseparable; sometimes the importance of the video itself trumps that of the song,” as Jon Caramanica

insightfully wrote in a New York Times article published on January 30th. These videos may include complicated webs of signification, but the artist’s larger message is abundantly clear. For instance, Gambino’s “This is America” exemplifies this idea in its title alone, stating bluntly that what the viewer is about to witness is America. Reviewers from the Guardian, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone have continued to focus their reviews primarily on references to pop culture and events from the artists’ personal lives. The three hip hop music videos I analyze here include visuals that drastically change the narrative presented by the song alone. In Kendrick Lamar’s track HUMBLE, from his Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN., the lyrics of the hook are a striking command, I quote, “Bitch sit down, be humble.” And, from the very start, the music video positions Kendrick as a religious figure, wearing a robe reminiscent of that of the Pope. In another scene shown here, Kendrick and his friends are positioned in a mock image of the last supper, with Kendrick in the middle of the table as Jesus. These images coupled with the hook of “HUMBLE.” emphasize the commanding nature of the track, both persuading his audience to listen and ironically framing Kendrick within his massive ego. However, there are key characters present in the music video for “HUMBLE.” that are lost without Lamar’s visuals – his friends (or in the case of that last image, his disciples), and his audience within the video’s world. Kendrick lip-syncs to his verses and hooks throughout the entirety of the video, however, only some of other men shown nod along with him. It would seem that only a select few are able to hear

the music. For example, a few of these bizarre moments feature Kendrick, wearing all white, surrounded by men wearing all black. The men that surround him clearly either can’t hear the music or aren’t really bothering to listen. Notice that these images are simultaneously referring back to the previously shown religious imagery in their black- versus-white color scheme without the directness of Kendrick’s pope-like outfit and the reference to Da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” One of the more striking moments of this video shows Kendrick once again wearing all white, but now with the red laser sights of police snipers aiming at him from the audience’s angle. He is behind a glass window, moving and rapping along as if he’s yelling the words to a world that can’t possibly hear him. [ Play clip] I would like to pause here in order to point out the deplorably familiar muting of black women in this video. While one of its most famous moments is a refreshing indictment of the impossible feminine and femme standard of beauty, Lamar’s clever illustration of the line, “I’m so fuckin’ sick and tired of the photoshop, show me something natural like afro on Richard Pryor, show me something natural like ass with some stretch marks,” nonetheless forces black women into silently posing for the male gaze. By the end of the video, all of the men in black leave the frame, with Kendrick standing alone to stare out at the audience as if to ask the implied question, “were you listening?” [Play clip] The lyrics of the audio track alone depict Kendrick’s experience as a black man living in the United States, and only those seemingly close to Kendrick in the video can hear them. Therefore, the song operates at two levels of reception.

When paired with these visuals, the work as a whole takes on a deeper, more relevant meaning. ….. Unlike Lamar’s “HUMBLE.,” Childish Gambino’s most recent release, titled “This Is America,” forces the black experience into the face of the viewer. The world of the video, set in a warehouse that some critics have loosely related to the set of Michael Jackson’s short film for the track “Bad,” becomes increasingly chaotic as panicked strangers flood the frame. This mess continues to build up until, close to the end of the video, there is a small moment of complete silence and peace. Gambino lights a joint, the music starts again, and the scene slowly fades out while he runs for his life from an angry mob. This video exists to expose some of the harsh realities of the African American experience to the world. Notice that the video open with a shocking, senseless act of violence. [play clip] As the video progresses, the audience suffers through the whiplash of a mass shooting over the course of a few seconds, with our attention commanded the next second by a viral dance. Two versions of “This Is America” are available for public consumption. The audio-only version doesn’t include the gunshots in the video – a crucial part of the video’s violent narrative. [play audio bit] The jarring shift in musical genre is clear, but the shock factor of sudden gun violence is lost. If Gambino’s representation of the state of the union, then, is couched in these jarring shifts between candy coated mass media and horrific acts of violence, it could be said that the lyrics of the track have little to do with the video’s meaning. However, closer inspection reveals that the lyrics demonstrate these sharp juxtapositions as well,