So recently a video came out on the internet featuring Lil' Wayne during his deposition. As some of you may know, a relatively well-known documentary came out in 2009 called 'The Carter', created by Quincy Jones III, in which Lil' Wayne was followed by a camera for some period of time. This film might provide some insight into the life of a moden-day hip hop artist that could perhaps familiarize those of us who don't know much about the hip hop culture in general. Anyway Lil' Wayne objected against the documentary claiming it was a "scandalous portrayal" of him and has since been trying to sue Quincy Jones. The reason I felt this related to our class discussion today was simply Lil' Wayne's attitude in this video. He manages to portray many of the things we associate with hip hop culture such as violence and a rise-to-the-top attitude all in a single 5 minute clip. He appears disrespectful, ignorant, and blatantly aggressive at various parts of the video and it seemed like an interesting glance at the person that has the ability to influence millions of people through his music. The video itself is almost comical and I'm not quite sure how anyone can respect someone like that. As I was trying to find out more about this whole debacle, I started to notice some of the titles and comments on youtube that seemed to glorify Lil' Wayne's performance by people, i'm assuming, to be his fans. This goes back to what we were talking about in class how these hip hop artists not only include violence in their music, they seem to encourage it in their audience by glorifying this type of behavior. Anyway it was just something that caught my eye, feel free to watch the video itself or I have the link to the documentary below as well if you would like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbKpdsLspwo
Although Lil Wayne's frustration can be skewed in the form of disrespect, I doubt that anyone else would react any differently to those types of questions. The "TMZ" logo hanging on the top right hand corner of the screen signifies alone that the videos sole purpose is to generate controversy, and when being repeatedly asked personal questions about your criminal record, I certainly would have gotten upset over time. It would be safe to assume that he encounters paparazzi like this man on a daily basis, so yeah, frustration would steadily mount up to a certain boiling point.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Colin; I really doubt this will change the views of any fans of Lil Wayne. Rap artists rarely lose fans during lawsuits and issues; on the contrary, they can gain more (e.g. T.I., Lil Wayne himself, etc.). Though the recent music he has produced has been frustrating for many fans (My friend is one and he always express discontent), people still follow him because of his old music. In fact, many of his fans accept the violence and horrible attitude towards authority that Lil Wayne portrays, so it comes to no surprise to them when they see this video.
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