Watching White Men Can't Jump

A black man would rather look bad and lose

I was recently watching a film named 'White Men Can't Jump' and despite it's obvious aim to break stereotypes it also enlightened me with a few too, Woody Harrelson who plays Billy Hoyle an white basketball hustler says a line in his script that got me thinking....'a black man would rather look good and lose than look bad and win'. This may have been a racial critique of black men but looking at the music industry and throughout history there has been a few events that have backed up his 'crazy' statement. 






Lets look at famous rappers

Asher Roth- "But money doesn't mean
a damn thing to me, i just want to be,
i want to be free"

Asher Roth just looking at the photograph on the right, one can already tell his image isn't like other rappers in fact i'm sure just looking at him you thought 'he looks strange for a rapper' this judgement brings me to my point. Is because he's white that people don't think he's rapper? No because they are amazingly talented rappers like Eminem but i'm sure it's because his look is so casual, his cream hoodie and standard jeans makes him look like any other person. We can say that it is just Asher who sticks to this humble 'apperance' but it pains me to say it most famous non-black rappers prefer to either look responsible or causal, without durags, diamond chains or showing cars without spinning rims. Just looking at what Eminem wore in the majority of his earlier videos is further evidence than he would rather be an amazing artist than look good for the camera/video.  

Simple white T-shirt and dyed blond hair
he carried this simple image throughout
the years 

After all these years, he's still
kept it simple

Even in genres

Ellie's costume for Under The Sheets

Rihanna's costume for
'What's My Name '

Looking at modern genres where the majority of musicians involved in the genre are black, are heavily filled with artist who must acquire a certain image as they grow in their fame, so this isn't all assumption lets look at the RnB and Indie industry.  Ladies first, Rihanna and Ellie Goulding both are iconic people in their different genres,  Rihanna in the RnB/Pop genre and Ellie Goulding in the Indie/Pop genre i have  taken screen-shots from videos of both them in their music videos for songs that were sex-related to make the comparison fair as possible. Looking at both pictures already you can see Rihanna is displaying much more of her body than Ellie is and her less-covering clothes are more wild and racy than Ellie's. As you can see Rihanna's image is very important to her whereas Ellie seems to not go for the most stylish video costumes. Even though these are just two artists from the two genres (Indie and RnB) but this is practically the same for many artists of the different industries, so is Woody's statement a blown out of proportion judgement? Or does his statement contain a deep truth of things black people do in the music industry?


What's this got to with me and the music video.....?
Well as I've been thinking of the presentations of people/concepts and stereotypes of rappers and hip-hop artists and if we will follow the usual practices of the industry or if will challenge aspects and go against the grain to convey a message.  In relation the information above...shall we copy the typical 'gangstar'  rapper look? Or will we (me [KdotC] the main artist and svf [the featuring artist]) go for a more humble costume choice that honestly represents our actual  for the music video. Let's look at some music videos we can take ideas and influence from to get a better understanding of what we want to do.