Textual Analysis

Killaz Group-Pod Blokiem/Jestem Szejkiem

Pod Blokiem/Jestem szejkiem by Killaz Group was directed by Dariusz Szermanowicz. The video was made to promote a movie about Polish hip-hop/rap culture called “Blokersi” and was also a promo to a first mainstream album by Killaz Group called “Nokaut”.

The video has most of the genre characteristics, hand gestures, movement etc. Using the hand gestures the artist tries to illustrate some of the things his talking about in his song. The other characteristic is the setting, in most rap songs depending on the lyrics and the story behind them the director tries to find the appropriate setting for the video, which is also the case in this video, both artists talk about the place they used to grow up in and that it was, so the setting is also made to look as being tough and unfriendly. The relationship between the lyrics and the visuals is only the one I mentioned above, artist talks about a place of his upbringing being touch and the visuals, the set is also made to look this way. The relationship between music and the visuals is much wider, in the first half of the song the beat is much slower, so the artist’s movement is also much calmer, in from time to time the director edited in and explosion on the screen to go with the beat. In the second half of the song the beat changes, it becomes more dynamic and faster, therefore the tempo of the video changes, in the second half the director used more different types of shots, artist’s movement become more aggressive and faster. In both parts of the video the main focus is on the artist, the most common shot is the medium close-up, in the first part of the clip there’s only one artist performing so the whole focus is on him and his performance. In the second part of the video both of the artists are performing, depending of the order of performance the focus changes on the artist there’s always one artist working as the other ones backup. The video is narrative based, the reason for that is the song is about the artists place of living, so there’s a lot of shots of places corresponding to the lyrics e.g. grey city living blocks. The artist is also talking about his “people” so there’s a lot of shots of him shaking hands with many different people.