Chris Brown is artist who has developed his style over the years from main stream RnB to more generic underground sounds such as hip hop dance widening his genre range.
When his debut single run it came out he was known as sweet boy with great talent as his early videos such as 'Yo' included interaction with the ladies and b boy dance moves. He established himself as performance based artist with his videos being recognised for the slick choreograhy.
When chris brown began to develop his sound he started collaborating with artists such as Chris Brown and his inconic symbol became his swagger. He chose to wear varsity jackets and big trainers which werealways noticable and this would be expected to seen in his videos such as 'Kiss Kiss' and 'Wall to wall' this was before the more drastic developments and he was still recognised for his dance ability.
After the scandal involving Rhianna Chris looked to re-invent himself as an artist and this meant changing his style. Although he had collaborated with rappers before he always chose to sing, when he released champion with chipmunk it was clear he had developed his new style. Covered in tatoos and wearing more hip hop clothes it seemed as though the sweet boy image had disappeared.
This underlined the transformation of his ocnography as he is still recognised for his amazing dance moves, like michael Jackson he seems to have re-invented himself and his style with every album but still has his trademark motifs.
This music video is an example of creating the illusion of many locations simply by adding and removing props to follow the lyrical narrative without taking away focus. The video features the main and supporting artist snoop dogg and pharrell williams and a number of "hip hop honeys" which is only to expected as the genre is rap.
This shot shows a close up of snoop but you cannot see his eyes so this draws focus onto him and you can see the rings on his hang which purposely shows his money and swagger . This adds to his mystique as the non-diagetic sound of the slow track perfectly fits the concept of him being a gangster.
the second shot i have selected shows him doing the crip walk which is also associated with the hip hop scene. his slow dance is accompanied by the intro of the first lyrics which is simply a vowel sound. This shot almost announces his introduction to the track as we get more of a favour of the artist .
in this clip snoop is accompanied by the traditional sexualised women in very little clothing as the chorus kicks in. his slow movement is mirrored by the background dancers to reflect the lyrics which are "park it like its hot" while they all do a slow wheel movement. This shows the coolness of the video and track as the slow beat and lyric speed is not over shot by excessive dance moves or flashy effects.
By this shot we have introduced to Pharrell and a number of expensive objects and we see the Bentley which perfectly fits in with the mise-en-scene of the genre as we see rapper accompanied by attractive women and grand objects and showing little interest in either as he lays down his lyrics and plays it cool. This medium shots allows the focus to be split between the artist and the car to engage the target audience.
This extreme close up of money further plays to the stereotype of hip hop videos as we have now been given the ingredients of cars girls and money. This simplicity of this extreme of close up of money being dropped on the table suggests possible illegal activity and the song itself refers to how behave if ever caught by the police in a suspicious situation.
This is clearly a concept video as there is no straight line narrative in either the audio or visual timeline and we see only the artists and a number of different items such as cars money and women which brings to the conclusion that the concept of the video is the stereotypical life of a gangster.
