Migos feat. Gucci Mane - Slippery

Migos - Slippery:

On 'Slippery', Migos team up with fellow Atlantan - Gucci Mane for a song about drugs, jewellery, and Quavo’s aunts and uncles. The track features a catchy beat produced by Deko and OG Parker. This is not the first time Migos have featured Gucci on their tracks. He has appeared before on tracks such as 2016’s “Now” and 2013’s “Dennis Rodman.” As well as this, Migos are thought to have inspired Gucci’s latest album title, Drop Top Wop. The music video was released on May 4th 2017 and already has 141 million views.

Styles: 

This music video style is all performance. As a lot of what Migos are rapping about and a common theme in modern hip hop is showing off. As they have come from having nothing to making millions of dollars they want to show this off in their performance in ways such as jewellery, the setting of the music video (in the rappers' mansion), by pools and jacuzzi's and by sports cars. Although this music video has no elements of performance to an audience, each member definitely performs to the camera and the girls around them.

Techniques:

The main techniques used in Slippery are Cutting to the Beat, Lip-Sync and Multi-Screen. It does also switch occasionally to a retro style video; these shots are actually home recordings of Quavo's most recent house party for his birthday. Cutting to the beat is often used in rap songs as the beats are usually quite fast and you can achieve a fast paced, stylish look when cutting to this. It is often used to cut away from an object or actor to the artist to emphasise an important lyric. For example at 1:14 when it cuts back to Quavo performing to the performing saying 'Ice tray, Ice Tray' - talking about his expensive jewellery. Multi-screen is very commonly used in groups to obviously show each member of the group all at once.





Mise-en-scene:

As can be seen in some of the pictures, Migos are constantly in expensive clothing such as Gucci which is also mentioned in the songs lyrics. And have on extremely expensive custom jewellery. This, of course, is them flaunting their wealth and power over other people and other rappers in the same genre. Also relating to wealth we can see a women pouring a glass of expensive, Royal Elite brand vodka. Gucci Mane, who features on the song is also shown with an expensive, luxury sports car, which again is another example of the rappers showing off their wealth. A yacht is also shown in the background of another shot. In a lot of the shots, the artists or expensive items around them are placed to stand out due to colour and camera angles. This is to make them the centre of attention and develop their star power. This can relate to Richard Dyer's Star Theory as the more a label can develop an artist's star power, the more money they can also make off of them. 


Camerawork: 


The music video is mostly handheld, moving shots which links well to the song making it flow freely and make it feel more real. The music video mainly varies between close-ups and mid shots of the four artists with women used as background figures. We also get a lot of close-ups of body parts of multiple women usually the sexiest parts of the female body, which shows the objectification that occurs in the video which I explain more of in the Representations section. Close-ups are also used for other reasons, for example, to again show the expensive clothes and jewellery the artists are wearing to continue to  show how much money they have.





Sound:

The sounds focus is purely on the lyrics and the music track itself. There is no other diegetic or non-diegetic sound involved such as skits of dialogue. This is to really emphasise the beat of the music and its catchy lyrics - these two lines of the chorus have been most popular: 'Slippery, 'scuse me, please me, I'm up, oh, believe me, believe me'. This is a common theme amongst many hip hop videos as they want people to know their lyrics.

                                                                                    Editing:

There is very little visual/special effects editing in this music video as it seems the key focus is just clean, crisp shots cutting back and forth between the rappers and the appealing women actors. As well as using the 'Cutting to the Beat technique. They clearly had the idea to keep the editing simple and show off in other ways such as their jewellery. There is however, some colour grading to enhance bright colours and make them look more vivid against a dullish background as you can see here in Offset's shirt.


Representation:

Throughout this music video women are objectified and are wearing very little clothing. They are basically treated as an accessory and seem to be entranced by the artists at times. Women are also used in the video as a background accessories, as you can see here from these two Over the Shoulder shots where twice we see the rappers at the front in focus and the women in sexual positions but blurred out behind them.

As the music video does not follow any narrative, the women have very little relevance to anything really going on, they are just there to look good. As well as this, the women in the video, when in the same shot as the artists, are often show behind the artist and at a lower level than them. This connotes the rappers superiority over the women. We see a couple of shots of the same woman in pouring a glass of vodka whilst Migos relax in the pool which could portray that women are only good for carrying out jobs for men. The video almost makes it seem as if the artists own the women, always over them or having them carry out task for them. Overall, Migos music videos are fairly typical examples of how women are represented across hip-hop.


Below are some more screenshots of how the music video has a clear link to Laura Mulvey's theory of the male gaze, where woman shown in the perspective of a heterosexual man - woman are shown as objects to admired. These shots are all different examples of the types of angels that can be used.