Summer homework ( original)

This is my original summer homework, i chose to research the artist Tupac shakur.

I chose the late Tupac Shakur to do my research on, Tupac's music falls into the hip hop genre however his music videos were different to other hip hop artists videos.
Rap and hip hop videos are known to be very materialistic showing expensive cars, clothes, seductive women etc. however Tupac takes a more real approach, his music videos are mainly set in working class areas, showing run down homes, casual clothing. Tupac as an artist wanted to try and tell the world how bad life for the working class in America is so he showed this in his videos.

A few examples of his videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl54ABY8VgY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfXwmDGJAB8

The elements he uses in his videos:

• Casual clothing
• Working class areas
• Narrative
• Performance

What genre are they?

• Hip Hop / Rap

How do they compare to other artists from the Hip Hop genre?

     Tupacs videos are very different to the videos of other rap artists, as explained before his videos are a lot more 'real'  and down to earth. You could say this is due to the time he was making music in the 1990's and that the style of all music videos has changed, however even comparing his videos to another artist in the same genre who also made music at the same time as Tupac, you can clearly see a big difference in the conventions of the music videos and the messages they are sending out.

This is an example of another artist who was also very popular at the time of Tupac and who was in the same genre of music, but portrays a very different style:

Notorious B.I.G - Hypnotize
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7u7m_notorious-big-hypnotize_music

The video above follows all the stereotypical conventions of a Hip Hop music video e.g. money, designer clothes, private yacht, women in bikinis, expensive cars etc. A very different style to Tupac Shakur.

50 cent - Down on me   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaXaig_43lU

This video was made recently so has a completely different style to the 'old school' videos however it contains the same conventions as the Notorious video.
 
How has your artist changed over time?

•  Unfortunately as Tupac was murdered at the height of his career we didn't have a chance to see if he would change over time, but from the beginning of his music career to his death Tupac Shakur seemed to have the same image throughout.

 Has the film style changed over time?

•    The film style of his videos varied depending on the message of his song, for example the song 'Brenda's got a baby' was filmed all in black and white to send out a serious message. The video shows shots of the story e.g. the girl and her baby, and shows shots of Tupac performing. 
• I don't believe his film style  changed greatly, most of them had a mix of performing shots and narrative shots.