Textual Analysis

Ghetto Gospel - Tupac Shakur ft. Elton John. Textual Analysis 1

Released in 2005 by interscope records, this hip hop music video by the (now deceased) artist Tupac Shakur. This video was shot in a narrative style and shows the last few days of the life, and the murder of a young black man living in America. In this respect the video is less typical and conventional, but is a more conceptual hip-hop music video as it does not contain any performance elements. The target audience for this video would have originally been hardcore fans of hip hop music but since the original song has been remixed and Elton John’s vocals have been added this would widen the target audience, attracting fans of Elton John – generally an older target audience.  

                However there are some elements of the video that are typical of the genre. For instance the mise en scene of the characters featured in the video is generally typical of the hip-hop genre. The clothes worn by the characters in this video are typical of the genre. The main character is seen wearing a baggy black hood, baggy jeans and trainers. Other characters are depicted wearing similar clothes, with baseball caps and thick gold chains. These are all factors typical of the hip-hop genre. However this factor is also one that I believe challenges the conventions too; this is because in other hip-hop music videos the focus of the video is about the artist’s image, featuring close ups of the artist’s face and clothes. But in this video this is not the case, which leads me to believe that the purpose of this video is partly to promote the music of the artist and not the image of the artist as much. Also as the character of the video is not Tupac himself this idea of the video promoting the music is reinforced. 

                This video, telling the story of a murder through shots and clips of day to day life in this American city is filmed in a narrative style. The video begins with a shot of a group of people including normal civilians and paramedics and tells the viewer immediately that the video is going to lead up to a death. But the way the video goes about telling this story is rather conceptual  

                As previously mentioned; this video does in fact have some inter-textual reference; this reference is the murder of Tupac Shakur. This gives the video a certain meaning beyond what is happening on screen due to the artist’s lyrics. This external meaning also furthers the idea of it being all about the music by the artist. Rather than trying to focus on the image of the artist. This is because Tupac had in fact been murdered at the time of this video’s release so his image wouldn’t need to be promoted, only the sales of his records, which makes this idea of promoting the music rather than the image of the artist more believable. Also this theme of a young black male being murdered in the video is very closely related to the idea of the death of Tupac himself. This would attract the target audience of die-hard hip-hop and Tupac fans. (Tupac was an artist with a very precise target audience and a large cult following).

                With regards to Andrew Goodwin’s theories, this video does have a illustrative and amplifying relationship between the lyrics and the visuals. The lyrics, talking about life in the area where Tupac lived. For instance;

“i stop and stare at the younger, my heart goes to 'em 
They tested, it was stressed that lay under” 

Whilst Tupac says this, there is a clip of a group of youths from his area partaking in drug dealing. The rest of the lyrics conjure images of the area where the Tupac is from or lived, and the visuals on screen seem to show the viewer the general area, this is illustration through the relationship between lyrics and visuals. But also the visuals on screen take the negative aspects of the area and not only show what the lyrics say, but transform into the story of a murder, and given the inter-textual reference we automatically assume to be the murder of Tupac himself.

There is some relationship between the visuals on screen and the music, and the visuals. This is because the shots seem to be cut in a way that seems to match the beat of the song.  Although this happens in many music videos, there is a more regular pattern between the hard cuts and the pace of the editing and the pace of the music. This is not always true however but can be taken as the director’s attempt to focus upon the music and lyrics of the artist rather than the artists image, and given the situation with the artist being deceased at the time of the video’s release this makes perfect sense. The relationship between the music and lyrics and the visuals on screen seems to further my idea of this video being more about the music than the artist’s public image.