"Super Bass" Video Analysis

The song “Super Bass” by America female recording artist Nicki Minaj was released on the 5^th April 2011. It is from her deluxe edition of her album Pink Friday and comes under the music genre’s of R’n’B, Pop and Hip Hop. It was produced by Kane Beatz and JMIKE and is under the record labels of young money, cash money and Universal Motown.

The technical codes in this video involve camerawork where low angle shots and close ups are used. The low angle shots of Nicki Minaj near the beginning of the video accentuates the size of her cleavage which increases her appeal to the audience particularly those of the opposite sex. Close up’s of the male model’s body are also shown to sexualise him and boost his appeal to the audience.

These are not only technical codes but they conform to the genre conventions of an R’n’B/Hip Hop music video where males or females are usually dressed provocatively in order to attract the audience watching. This could also be seen as a symbolic code as the men used within a video of this genre are always either very muscular and the women are always extremely curvy with large assets.

Another genre convention of this music is the fact that money and expensive things such as cars appear. However this is also a symbolic code as the expensive car is pink and so is the hair colour of Nicki Minaj and her dancers and many other elements in her video. This connotes the idea of feminism and the specifically idea of Barbie. As Nicki Minaj also refers to herself as the “Harajuku Barbie” this could be a way of putting that across within her music video. 

The idea of feminism with in the video is also a symbolic code itself as Nicki Minaj challenges gender stereotypes in this video because she is doing things to the male like touching him and showing a more dominant side towards him. In one of the scenes she is seen to be throwing water at the male from a pink cup which is very symbolic as the pink connotes feminism however the throwing of the water shows a more aggressive female. Aggression is a personality trait which males are said to have whilst females are meant to be more motherly and caring and so this definitely goes against that.

Many common conventions of music videos are used such as fast edits, the video is the same length as the actual song and also the artist is presented as though she is singing along to the song and so performing for the audience. The genre convention used which would fit a Pop video is the fact that there is a lot of performing especially through synchronized dancing however the artist is the main dancer.