The Genre of Our Song and The Signifiers

In order to get ready for our pitch on Wednesday, we have been told to answer a few questions. I have been left in charge of finding out the genre of our song and the conventions of this genre.

For our song, it is a mixture between the indie genre and the hip hop genre, with Maroon 5 representing the indie side and Rihanna representing the hip hop music side.

The conventions in music videos for these two genres are:

Indie

• Performance based
• Guitar band
• Live performances in front of a crowd
• Drums
• Skinny jeans
• Long hair
• Polo shirts
• Lots of CU of the instruments

HipHop

• Lots of beauty shots
• Girls dancing
• Luxuorious settings e.g. big houses, exclusive clubs, sports cars
• Bling jewelry
• Focussed around money
• Glamourous clothes
• Either performance and narrative based

The Evolution of The Genres

Indie

• Fairly recently evolved
• Originated in the USA and UK in 1980's
• Complete control of their own music
• Rely on internet, word of mouth and touring to promote them
• Start being signed to independant record labels - quite underground
• Originally guitar based alternative music with artists such as Aztec Camera and The Smiths in the UK
• Distortion of heavy sounds with artists like R.E.M and The Replacements were found in the USA
• In the 1990's the emergance of new alternative rock bands led to the indie genre to refer to more underground bands
• In the 2000's the line between indie and mainstream has become less distinct.
• Many indie bands have looked to commercial record labels to promote them such as The Arctic Monkeys
• More underground bands have looked more to the internet to promote themselves and more and more websites dedicated to these bands have begun to appear

HipHop

• The roots are found in the African American origin in the 1970's
• The name originally came from the US army as the words mimicked their marching style
• Arouse in New York City in the Bronx when block parties were common
• The "godfather" of hiphop was DJ KOOL HERC mixing disco and rhythm beats at his parties
• Originally focussed on extending percussion breaks with an audio mixer and rhythm beats
• Jamaican immigrants provided the influence to the rapping in hip hop
• Hiphop music became an outlet for troubled youths
• The Furious Five was the first rap lyricist to call himself an MC
• The first hiphop recording was in 1979 called Rappers Delight by Sugar Hill Gang
• In the 1980's the genre diversified a lot more
• Hiphop evolved into people rapping over complex beats and with metaphoric lyrics
• Kurtis Blow was the first hiphop artist to be named a mainstream artist as he appeared in the Sprite commercial
• LL Cool J was also a huge mainstream success from his first LP
• It became more national and internationalised
• New School hiphop first came about in 1983 with records from Run DMC and LL Cool J with records that were shorter and therefore easier to gain radio play
• Hiphop's golden age was between 1980's and 90's as the music was so experimental and diverse
• In the 1990's hiphop became integral in all popular music with many American pop songs having hiphop components
• Hiphop diversified even more in the 90's with sub genres such as Nu Soul and G-Funk
• The 90's saw the rise of many big named hiphop stars such as Snoop Dogg and Fat Joe with their music styles being very lucrative with the public
• Hiphop in 2000's saw the rise of even more subgenres such as snap music and crunk
• Many countries still were unable to produce homegrown hiphop artists and instead imported the music from the USA
• In 2005 hiphop sales began to decline which many say is because the younger generation are tired with the violent image or just are downloading the music illegally instead of purchasing it
• Still remain popular with artists such as The Black Eyed Peas and Eminem in the Billboard charts