JAY-Z: Music Video Analysis

On June 30th, 2017 JAY-Z released the music video for his song The Story of O.J. on Tidal as a of teaser trailer for his latest album 4:44. In lieu of shooting a traditional music video, JAY-Z opted instead to create an animated video that employs a cartoonish style that calls back to flagrantly racist portrayals of African Americans in classic animated short films such as All This and Rabbit Stew and Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land (Maxwell). After its release, the music video was met with both universal acclaim and extreme controversy primarily due to its striking visuals and explicit lyrics. Visually speaking this music video contains multiple visual elements and devices such as symbolism, metaphor, and allusion in order to portray
Overall, in this music video JAY-Z uses various visual examples of African American stereotypes and black oppression in order to create a satirical animated short that discuses themes of financial freedom, self-oppression, and many of the overall problems that plague the African American community today in an effort to establish an effective pathos based appeal to his audience.
One of the biggest themes that this music video discusses using its visuals is African American oppression; this is done mainly through the use of allusion. The first example of this occurs when the protagonist of the video is shown riding in the back of a bus behind a sign that reads colored. This is an allusion to the Jim Crow Laws that were in effect in the United States from 1874 to 1975 that aimed to segregate African Americans from Caucasians by restricting use of certain facilities from African Americans under the assumption of separate but equal treatment
An example of this occurs when the protagonist says “Y'all out here still takin' advances, huh? Me and my niggas takin' real chances, uh Y'all on the 'Gram holdin' money to your ear There's a disconnect, we don't call that money over here” while walking through the cellar of a slave ship. In this scene JAY-Z is using the slaves in captivity as symbolism to describe musical artists specifically African American artists who he feels are being taken advantage of by their record labels. The line itself is a reference to artists who took pictures of themselves holding money from their advances which is a cash loans from a record label to fund music videos, recording sessions, promotion, etc to their ears like telephones on the social media platform Instagram (Reilly). In comparison to these artists, JAY-Z uses his own money to finance his musical endeavors due to the level of financial freedom that he was able to achieve from a record label. The idea of financial investment is brought up in a scene during which the protagonist is shown in the office of a physiatrist discussing how he feels that wasted his money on lavish cars instead of investing in a piece property that has now greatly appreciated in value. In this scene the session with the physiatrist acts as a form of symbolism for JAY-Z's internal strife over missed financial opportunities.