Dangerous – Kardinal feat. Akon

1. Dangerous – Kardinal feat. Akon Textual Analysis Presentation Group 2: Craig, Pritesh, Sumit

2. Hip-hop/R&B Genre Wikipedia explains hip hop music as a music genre typically consisting of a rhythmic vocal style called rap which is accompanied with backing beats. Wikipedia explains R&B as a music genre of western popular music. "R&B" originates from its association with traditional rhythm and blues music, the term R&B is today most often used to define a style of African American music originating after the demise of disco in the 1980s

3. Representation & Ideology • The Women are represented as beautiful women, who catches a mans eye. • Kardinal and Akon are presented as high profile celebrities who get what they want since they are really attracted to a women labelling her “dangerous” • Both artist seem wealthy and very interested in women • The female character seems extremely popular as she walks through a club with people creating an aisle for her.

4. Form and Style • The length of the video is 4 minutes and 20 seconds which is an average length of a music video. • The artists are shown on the video lip-syncing. • Many girls shows exposing parts of their body which has become an aspect of hip-hop music videos. Quite a lot of performance by those girls as well. • Animation and Special Effects have not been used in the video. • Colour has been used in an interesting way. The video does not look like normal music videos, filmed with HD cameras, etc. Lighting is not used majorly.

5. Technical Aspects Editing: • During the start, editing is used like they are used in movie titles which shows the artists name. • Many transitions used to move from one shot to another, new shot appears out of something reflective, e.g. sunglasses, glass, helmet. • Slow motion used at the start. It goes onto slow motion as the girl passes the artist. This is to emphasise that the artists have noticed her. • At 2 minutes 12 seconds, editing done well. Photograph of a girl posing becomes a picture of a magazine cover. This may have been done to show that she is either a model or celebrity.

6. Mise-en-scene and Cinematography: • The settings used looks as if the video has been shot in USA. Some of the different settings that have been used are places like a café, a beach, a club. • Props have been used such as jewellery, sunglasses and a DJ kit. • A wide variety of camera shots and angles have been used. • Mainly mid-shots used when the camera is on the girls. This is so that the audience can see what she is wearing properly. • Close-up’s only used at time, to show emotions of the actor. • A lot of zoom used. Mostly used during every time there is a cut when the new shot starts (zooming out at a mid-pace).

7. Institutional Contexts As this song is a hip-hop song, the television channels that would show the promo are the TV channels that show hip-hop music videos. These are channels such as: • MTV Base • Kiss • Channel U The music video features Akon, a recognised artist in the hip-hop genre; therefore, hip-hop music listeners are very likely to watch the video. Taking that into consideration, it is expected that broadcasters will show the music video on a regular basis. It is quite a new song so it would be get regular peak time play because of its popularity and more importantly, its artist that is in the video. Statistics show that the song is in the top 20 in UK singles chart. It was also at the top of ‘US Billboard Top 40’ in the past.

8. Narrative • Akon’s – ‘So Dangerous’ video does not consist of a narrative. • A narrative is a construct created describing a sequence of events and follow some kind of a story line. • I think the video is a non-narrative because it does not follow a storyline and consists of a lot of edits that show how he and Kardinal Offishall feel that this girl is so dangerous. Where random montage editing takes scenes from cafes to shops and then ends with the same scene where the girl was first shown maybe showing just the lyrics representation closely rather than a narrative structure. Although the narrative parts can be where they are actually expressing their feelings towards the girl being ‘so dangerous’ and that how she has an effect on them when she walks past or even in the restaurants. • The only narrative parts are non-linear because they are just random scenes of places. • The music video was shot in Miami, Florida and directed by Gil Green. It debuted in early May on AOL.com. It starts off with a girl (Chanta Patton) passing by Kardinal, Akon, and friends as all of them watch her and follow her. Most of the scenes start by zooming out of objects such as sunglasses, a drinking cup, etc. It has scenes in a restaurant, a club, and a beach. There are cameo appearances in the video by DJ Khaled, Red Cafe, Black Chiney, Clinton Sparks and many more.

9. Artist & Marketing • Akon’s ‘So Dangerous’ was released to radio on March 18th 2008 and on iTunes on April 1st 2008. It is Kardinal’s first official single from Kardinal’s album Not 4 Sale. • Akon is more established in the music industry than Kardinal Offishall so it is very likely that Akon has given this video importance although as the audience and media has issues concerning his personal/previous life that his music derives from whether it is alternating slow/love/break up songs or gangster/convict narratives. After some videos for Akon this video may be to suggest that he has overcome his personal social issues and that the main concept of the video about a single girl being watched really carefully and described as being ‘so dangerous’ could mean that maybe he wants to now imply that it does not always have to be about relationships or that they do not really work out. This can be his way of getting into the viewers and now cultivate his new image.

10. Song • Akon’s – ‘So Dangerous’ video does correlate with the lyrics as they are talking about one specific girl who is described as being ‘so dangerous’ in front of all these different men and in different venues. The abstract interpretations can be described as using the editing effects when it fades into another scene matching the lyrics