Britney Spears Presentation

        

        

        

Music Genres

Music Genres

Here is a kinetic text video I made on Adobe After Effects where I show every single music genre as to help introduce the A2 topic of music videos. Every genre in this video are the recognised genres of the 21'st century which can range from genre's known to everyone to some which are completely unknown to the general public.

Favourite Music Genre's

In this blog post I will writing about my three favourite music genre’s which are firstly Trap music, secondly Drill music and lastly Rap music. I will also be writing about my favourite artist for each music genre, which are A$AP Ferg for Trap music, Chief Keef for Drill music and Travi$ Scott for Rap music.

Trap music is a genre of music that started in the early 1990’s in the southern states of the United states, most notably Georgia. As described on Wikipedia trap is is “typified by its aggressive lyrical content and sound, where the instrumentals are propelled by 808 kick drums or heavy extended sub-bass lines, double-time, triple-time and other faster time division hi-hats, layered synthesisers, and "cinematic" strings.” Lyrically trap music has an immense similarity and what can be argued as being identical to the lyrical topics which are used in Rap and Hip-Hop songs, the themes which are typically used includes topics such as the ghetto, drugs, violence and poverty in the ghetto’s of the USA. Some of the most recognised and praised artists in the Trap music scene include such artists as “808 Mafia, Southside, Sonny Digital, Young Chop and Metro Boomin”.

A$AP Ferg

My favourite trap artist is A$AP Ferg who is aged 26 is part of the hip hop collective A$AP Mob which I actually have seen in concert. He originates from Harlem, New York and is signed to the record labels: Polo Grounds and RCA. In 2013 the trap artist released his first studio album named Trap Lord which is why he is now nicknamed The Trap Lord which fits accordingly to the music genre he takes part in. As i have already explained I have seen A$Ap Ferg in concert, I also own his album Trap Lord, the thing i like about A$AP Ferg’s music is that it is original sounding, it sounds modern and it can really excite me because of his fast paced beats but on other songs he can be very calm and have slow paced trap beats, so i really like his originality and variety. I found out about A$AP Ferg because of his ties with A$AP Rocky which is one of my favourite rappers. A$AP Ferg also directs his own music videos, and he mostly decides to make music videos for his more fast paced songs, some of his songs follow the rap/trap music video conventions, such as filming in the ghetto and in the streets for example with his music video for Work (Remix) but on other songs such as Hood Pope and Let It Go, A$AP Ferg really gets creative and tells a story, he was nominated for a BET Award for best music video director in 2013. A$AP Ferg does have a website which is called www.asapferg.com where his tour dates, new and old music, updates and merchandise can be found as seen bellow:

Drill music is a sub genre of hip hop and it began in the South Side of Chicago with new and young adventurous rappers and producers from Chicago. Drill music has a few notable and recognisable conventions such as Violence, Drugs and dark lyrics which often refer back to Chicago life and the struggle of living in the Ghetto’s of South Side Chicago, as for beats wikipedia describes the sound of Drill beats as “ominous trap-influenced beats”. Drill music can really first be traced back to 2010 but really began to pick up in 2012 after its huge popularity in Chicago and the rise to fame of certain Drill artists such as Lil Durk, Fredo Santana, Lil Reese, Panos, & Chief Keef. 

Chief Keef

Chief Keef who is 19 years old who is also known as Chief Sosa and Almighty Sosa is from the South Side of Chicago which is where Drill music originated is a young drill artist and who is non debatably the the most recognised artist in the Drill music scene, mostly because he is the artist who made Drill music more international rather than a music genre listened to by only people from Chicago thanks to songs of his such as Sosa and Don't Like which gained a huge amount of radio play and popularity across the world, Chief Keef was first signed to Interscope Records and later ended up signing to 1017 Brick Squad and then creating his own label called Glo Gang which is when he released his first studio album called Finally Rich. I have never seen Chief Keef live but I would love too because he seems to “hype” up the crowd ver well. I found out about Chief Keef thanks to his song Sosa which became very viral on the internet a few years ago and since then I have been following his career, I also own Chief Keefs album called Finally Rich and I like it very much because of the fact that it seems very original because of the fact that he is such a musical pioneer thanks to the fact that he was really the person that raised Drill music into an internationally known music genre. Most of Chief Keef’s non musical content is very simplistic such as his music videos, for example the music videos for the songs Sosa and Don't Like which were both filmed in one house and are just different shots of Chief Keef and his crew with guns, drugs and money because he could not leave his house to film a music video because of the fact that he was under house arrest. His website does a very good job at portraying Chief Keef, it shows Chief Keef supposedly high from marijuana because of his squinting eyes surrounded by smoke, the use of the colour red is also widely used because it represents blood and violence which is what he associated to and is part of why he is so popular; From his website one can access his online store, watch his music videos, listen to his new music and stay up to date with his News tab as can be seen from the screen shot of his website bellow:

There is quite a bit of controversy over the Rap genre, many will argue that rap is a genre on its own and many others will consider rap a way to deliver lyrics over a hip hop beat, but in this post I am considering rap, a music genre. Wikipedia describes rap as more of a lyric delivery style saying “Stylistically, rap occupies a gray area between speech, prose, poetry, and singing. The word (meaning originally "to hit")as used to describe quick speech or repartee predates the musical form.” Though most people think of the beginning of rap originating back to the commencement of hip-hop the word rap was actually already in the english dictionary back in the 1960’s with the meaning “to converse” wikipedia describes it now-a-days as “a term denoting the musical style. Today, the terms "rap" and "rapping" are so closely associated with hip-hop music that many use the terms interchangeably.” Some of the most notorious and well known artists of the Rap genre include artists such as, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G, Nas, The Wutang Clan, Eminem, Jay-Z and Kanye West.

Travi$ Scott

My favourite rap artist is Travi$ Scott who is 23 years old and originates from Houston, Texas, he is signed to Kanye West’s label G.O.O.D Music, and in 2013 he released his first mixtape named Owl Pharaoh which is where he gained quite some popularity and how I found out about him because of his song Hell Of A Night which gained popularity in the underground rap scene, in 2014 he released his second mixtape named Days Before Rodeo which is an introductory mixtape to build anticipation for his upcoming first studio album set to come out on July 8th 2015 called Rodeo. Personally I own and I loved his Days Before Rodeo mixtape and is personally one of my favourite music projects of all time. The reason I like Travi$ Scott is because of his rapping and producing skills, I think that Travi$ Scott is an amazing producer, he actually started out as a producer, producing beats for artists such as Kanye West and Jay-Z and from there began to rap, a lot of his songs are created by mostly him both producing and rapping where as most rappers only rap and have a producer make the beat separately and there for, for this reason I find Travi$ Scott very talented because he does both jobs himself; His work is also very creative and he is not afraid to take risks on his songs and try some new sounds or techniques. As like with his music Travi$ Scott is very adventurous and creative on his music videos and will try new techniques, as with his Quintana pt. 2 music video which features footage taken with a custom extreme wide lens, but in his videos even though he tries new things he still follows quite a few rap video conventions, such as women with little to no clothing, throwing money, cool cars etc. which I like as well. Travi$ Scott does have a website but it is very minimalist, it only shows the cover to his new single entitled 3500 and the links as to where one can listen to it, as can be seen from the screen shot bellow:

Introduction to A2

Introduction to A2

Here is a introductory video to my A2 blog, which will be focusing on Music Videos and all that is in included in that topic. This year I will be creating my own music video along with a team of a few other people, I will also be starting my A2 blog to track every moment of my progress towards actually filming the music video, then editing it and finally finishing it and uploading it to YouTube at the end of the A2 year. I cant wait to begin this new and exciting project and I look forward to showing everyone the progress and improvements I will be going through in the coming year.