Textual Analysis 1 - Beez in the Trap

Textual Analysis

For my textual analysis I have decided to analyse Beez in the Trap by Nicki Minaj, featuring the rap artist 2 Chainz. The music video for this song is directed by Benny Boom, who directs videos for hip-hop, rap and alternative music videos for artists including Nicki Minaj, 50 Cent, T-Pain, Pussy Cat Dolls and many more.

Beez in the Trap is an electro-hop-rap song including Nicki Minaj singing/rapping and an interlude of 2 Chainz’ featured rap. This genre (including the genre of our chosen song: alternative hip hop rap), has many characteristics, that are present in the majority of this video. Throughout the video, Boom has used continuity and included lots of genre characteristics. In fact there is a perfect example of a genre characteristic within the first 5 seconds of the music video: this being the very fast short shot duration of two or more clips, and in this case the clips are of Nicki Minaj, credits of the artist’s names, and strobe lights in a night club. This creates the mood for the song and catches the interest of its intended target audience. Flickering of sets and scenes is very popular in hip-hop videos as the target audience tends to be young adults and teenagers of whom bright colours, flashing lights and scenes set in a night club would largely appeal to.

This music video is not centred around lyrics and visuals being linked and in sync, but there are a few examples of some relationships between the two: One would be Nicki showing her rings and chains, that say ‘Beez in the trap’ on them, up to the camera whilst the lyrics that are being said are in fact Beez in the Trap. Also, at 1 minute 55 seconds into the video, 2 Chainz raps about money, and as he says “…money, thousands” the editing flickers from his rap to an actor holding a fan of money. The money, being a prop, is amplified by the lyrics which portrays the meaning of the song, trapped in money. This message of the song can be explained by a quote from a Nicki Minaj interview about the song itself: “…I am always in the trap. Now the trap, ladies and gentlemen, relates to anywhere where you get your money.”

In terms of the relationship between the music and visuals, there are few points to illustrate. One would be the quick cuts within the music video that actually goes in perfect time with the beat of the song. When the beat of the song is less protrusive, and the drum or beat is deeper and sunken, the clips in the music video are edited to be in slow motion. Although the music never slows down, this slow motion seems to fit the son g perfectly and helps the video become very attractive towards the audience. Because the genre of the song, there is no instrumental solo, nor is there a change in pace, so as far as these factors are concerned, there are no visuals to illustrate them as they don’t exist!

Through research on the internet, I came to the realisation that Nicki doesn’t have any motifs, like a particular font on her album covers or a logo or anything like that. The one thing that she is known for however is her wacky makeup design and her enormous variety of hair colour changes, which can be seen throughout the whole of Beez in the Trap. One other characteristic that can a very large amount of times throughout, is close ups of Minaj’s and 2 Chainz’ faces. This relates back to genre characteristics as this type of camera angle is very popular in rap-hop videos.

Notions of looking is a good area for me to analyse in this video, although there is no references to ‘looking’ such as cameras within the mise-en-scene, or telescopes and binoculars, there is plenty of scenes where the artist is on sexual display. Throughout the song Nicki and other actresses in the video are depicted as being very revealing and sexual. This can be seen through both the costume used in the video, and the dancing in the all dance scenes. I believe that these features have been chosen because of Nicki Minaj’s image: a young woman, often showing flesh and being revealing in a lot of her videos. On the other hand, there is one area that isn’t present in this video, and that is intertextual reference. Intertextual reference is when a music video contains references to other music videos, motifs of clips/parodies from clips in other television programmes and films.

One last area to analyse is what type the music video is. There are three types to choose from: narrative (a video following a story line), concept based (a message behind the song), or a performance based video (artists performing the song in the video). I can straight away rule out the narrative type, as there is no story line within the visuals. A performance based video largely contains clips of the artists performing the song, and only short clips of cut-aways showing other things. But Beez in the trap just has the occasional lip-syncing, so I can go as far to say that the video is relatively performance based, but not completely. There is also a concept/message behind the video, which is the fact that Nicki has made her fame, earned her fame, and nobody can tell her otherwise. She also sings about the fact that she is trapped in places of money i.e. she has lots of it!

To conclude, it is possible to call this video concept and performance based, including a variety of genre characteristics, commonly used by rap-hop songs. Although the video doesn’t have any intertextual references, through all its characteristics, it is incredibly eye catching and appealing to its’ target audience.