My chosen genre of music video is urban which includes hip hop/rap, contemporary R&B, pop, electronica and Caribbean music such as reggae. Urban music was developed through the characteristics of genres such as R&B and soul. The term urban is heavily associated with African American music, particularly for an African American style of music, contemporary R&B. This particular genre of music is aimed specifically at 16-34 year olds. The structure for urban music usually consists of a popular hip hop star rapping the verses and a popular male/female singing the hook/chorus recent examples include 'B.O.B featuring Hayley Williams- Airplanes' and 'Eminem featuring Rihanna- Love the way you lie'. However you do often come accross male/female R&B artist singing the full track for example 'Beyonce- Irreplaceable. Many of these types of videos include meat shots and close ups of the artists performing for example, 'Rihanna in the love the way you lie' video and 'Fergie in the Black Eyed Peas video for Meet Me Halfway' as seen in the images above.
1990's
In the 90's urban music wasn't that popular in the UK, as there were a lot of British girl/boybands around at the time making pop music, however you would get the odd urban hit if it was a strong enough track. It wasn't until the late 90's that urban became really popular in the UK. It has always been popular in the US as that's were the majority of the artists originate from.
2000's
This type of music was originally dominated by black artists however this all changed in the year 2000 when Eminem broke records and became the first white rapper to hit number 1 with 'The Real Slim Shady' and has had six more since in the UK. His album 'The Marshall Mathers LP' became the fastest selling hip hop album of all time. Later that year he released a tune called 'Stan' which caused a lot of controversy in the UK with its extremely dark explicit lyrics and the horrofic video to promote it. It featured Eminem's number 1 fan called 'Stan', who lived with his pregnant girlfriend, writing three letters to Eminem. This person had an obsession as he looked and dressed exactly the same as Eminem and had a lot of posters on his walls. The letters were rapped out in the three verses and when Eminem didn't reply 'Stan' got angry and drunk. This finally came to a head when he drove his car with his preganant girlfriend in it and crashed it off a bridge into a river neither of them survived. After that Eminem got back to 'Stan' but it was too late and what had happend was all over the news and Eminem relised who it was and the song ends. In order to be promoted and played on the music channels the video had to be edited because it was too risky for daytime TV and too long as it lasted for 8:15, therefore the explicit version could only be played after 21:00. A message often came on before it warning viewers of the video even during the day as the edit was still quite shocking. Q magazine named 'Stan' the third greatest rap song of all time and the song came tenth in a similar survey carried out by top 40-charts.com. It came eleventh on VH1'S list of the greatest hip hop songs of all time.
In the early to mid 00's American R&B artists continued to dominate with artists such as Usher and Ne- Yo achieving massive success.
The main R&B female artists that had a lot of success throughout the decade and often getting compared were Beyonce and Rihanna. Both artists have worked with Jay Z and contributed to the success of his own career. They also make the same type of music however when Rihanna first started her music was classed as caribbean beats mixed with R&B, but nowadays she is classed as purely R&B. These artists are thought of as strong independent females and looked up to by many women across the world.
There were also a lot of urban bands that had a lot of success from both the US and the UK. The members included a mix of males and females and the music they made included a mixture of singing and rapping. Examples include the Pussycat Dolls, the Black Eyed Peas and N-Dubz.
The urban genre was prominantly dominated by American artists with them often achieving massive success over the years and becoming even more popular in the UK in the 00's. However in recent years British artists from the UK grime scene have dominated the charts. Artists such as Dizzee Rascal and Tinchy Stryder achieved two number 1's in 2009.
2010's
This trend has so far continued into 2010 with artists like Tinie Tempah and Roll Deep who originally came from the London underground grime scene, enjoying mainstream success and becoming very popular with the masses.
Many critics have argued that these types of artists have comprimised their sound in order to fit in with popular culture. Therefore being accused of not being 'purely' urban and the term 'sold out' getting used a lot amongst original fans. These artists have hit back saying that they enjoy making music, they are glad the majority of people are enjoying it and they like to make diverse music that appeals to everbody, so are therefore progressing. This has not only happend to UK artists, Rihanna has also been accused of changing her style of music as when she originally started with her first two albums 'Music of the Sun' and 'A girl like me' they were classed as a mixture of caribbean, dancehall, reggae and R&B. However by the time she got to her third and fourth albums 'Good girl gone bad' and 'Rated R' she had changed her sound and was thought of as 'purely' R&B with some tracks featuring and produced by popular rap artists.
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