music video analysis - drake 'god's plan'

Drake is arguably the biggest artist in the music industry and has been for a while, especially in hip hop as he embraces his humble beginnings and the rap culture, he grew up surrounded by. Due to the fame and recognition, he has gained over the years, drake needs to keep a particularly good image of himself in the public eye for him to remain on the podium of the hottest artists in the scene (music industry). This is the reason for his song- ‘god’s plan.’

At the very start of the music video, we see a black screen with bold, white text in the middle of the screen to force the viewer to decode the message in the way drake and his social media team want the consumer to, by communicating this message in the simplest way possible- black screen and the opposite colour writing, practically forcing the viewer to take in what is written. This is a media technique which was argued by Stuart Hall in his media messages theory. Hall argued that producers of media usually encoded messages they wanted the consumer to decode but not in such ways as simply writing out the message they are wanting to communicate. I believe this links into this opening scene of drake's music video as the producer has not just said that drake is a good man with good intentions of helping the unprivileged, however he has stated that the budget of the video which was a huge sum of close to a million dollars, was donated, every single cent of it- without the producer actually saying this YOU (the viewer) now have an understanding that drake is an ethical man that should be respected. This is what the producer wanted and judging from the feedback of the video he has done this successfully.

In this shot later in the video, there is the same message being communicated to the viewer, infact this message is communicated throughout the whole video. Drake is seen giving a big bundle of money to a woman and a younger man who we can assume is her son. The producer of this video purposely choses the people who are receiving money to be black. This is because unfortunately, it is public knowledge that ethnic minorities in USA and Canada are mistreated, less privileged and in most cases. In more need. Also, by having no other man apart from the younger boy, drake plays on the idea that there is no father figure in that family and drake (the only older man in the shot) is filling a role that he does not need to fill, out of the goodness of his heart. This is drake again portraying himself as an ethically good musician, that is doing things that not many other artists are doing. there is no doubt that this is a heartfelt thing for many of his fans who grew up without a dad, it is indeed a big audience which drake knows he can sell himself to and please. His producer establishes this in his music video by including things that link with what drake is talking about like the mis en scene- deprived neighbourhoods, the people included, locations etc

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