Genre

Uses And Limitations

The term genre has become less applicable to music than with film in the past decade due to the expanse of a variety of sub genres. Genre no longer defines an artist's style as within any one given album an artist will now experiment with many different sub-genres as there is now such a wide choice to delve in to. 

To apply this to Gorillaz '19/2000' record, we can see that their music is influenced mostly by Hip-Hop. Though the track sounds as though it is influenced by electro and also dance genres. This suggests that a single track can be a hybrid of numerous genre influences. This therefore makes it very difficult to recognise and even establish genre within the music industry.

The hybrid genres, and sub-genres are a positive movement in the industry however, as this means that bands able to broaden their fan base, as aspects of many genres can appeal to different target audiences.

Again, with the track 19/2000 on the self titled album 'Gorillaz' their addition of the Soulchild remix onto their album shows how they wanted to attract a wider audience to their music, as fans of dance who don't particularly like the original for its slow pace, may much prefer the remixed version.

Music Video Conventions of Genre

As previously mentioned in the Treatment, the genre of the record is Hip Hop with a Dance influence. Therefore we should look into music videos from both genres and look out for any similarities between the two.

Jay-Z - 'Girls, Girls, Girls'

This is an orignal Hip Hop track from 2001, clearly this has different style, tempo and influences to Gorillaz, though we can see similar influences to Dance genre, due to their being a lot of focus on the women.

Another Classic, original Hip Hop artist from the 90's is Snoop Dog.

Snoop Dogg ft Pharrell Williams - 'Beautiful'

The key contrast between the hip hop genre and the dance genre would be the locations of filming, glamorous areas of the USA are portrayed in these videos such as New York and Florida. This wouldn't be seen in a dance, or remix video typically.

There is also a clear ethnicity divide between Hip Hop and Dance, which focuses less on Black, Afro-Caribbean ethnic groups and more toward White, Caucasian groups. 

Dance videos show different styles, some focus more on the dance aspect, including shots from clubs/raves/parties such as:
Katy B - 'Katy On A Mission'


However this video has a key focus on the artist which is common of mainstream dance acts and pop acts. Though as our video is a remake and a remixed version, there would be little point focusing on a lead artist.


The alternatives to this, which is a direction beth and I chose not to go down, is the more brightly lit studio style video, which usually include dance routines and focuses closely on the women, for male gaze. We feel this is inappropriate for a video which is a remixed hip hop track. 
An example of this style of video is: 
Ida Corr vs. Fedde Le Grand -  Let Me Think About It


A great example of a recently released record which has a similar style to our video, due to the realism and rave scenes is:
Chase & Status - 'Blind Faith'

As well as these, Beth also found some music videos of a similar dance genre which incorporate some similar ideas to her original pitch and our redrafted idea. Click Here

From researching music video genre conventions it is obvious that the lines between sub-genres etc cross just as much as the music itself and again there is no clear definite codes or conventions to define a hip hop music video genre, nor dance or remix.