Music Video Analysis - '99 Problems' - Jay Z

Director - Mark Romanek.
Released - April 2004
Awards - 3 MPVA Awards, .MTV music video awards; best rap video, best director, best editing, best cinematography.

According to Goodwin's Theory;

Demonstrate genre characteristics: Conforms to the themes of rap and hip-hop videos; depicts quite rough areas, scantily clad women dancing and depiction of violence in some cases.

Relationship between the lyrics and the visuals: The video consists mainly of scenes film in Brooklyn, New York; where Jay Z grew up. The lyrics tell of his youth and the hardships he faced. A particular example of the visuals matching the lyrics is the scene where Jay Z and Rick Rubin are in a car and Jay Z is lyrically re-enacting the scenario he faced with police officers stopping him in his words 'because I'm young and I'm black and my hats real low?'. The visuals and their meanings are incredibly important to the director Romanek, and uses a lot of imagery especially in this video. It is also filmed partly in the apartment Jay Z grew up in.

Relationship between the music and the visuals: The song has a strong, heavy beat and is constant throughout; the video matches the tempo. However, you get the feeling Romanek was trying to concentrate matching the visuals to the lyrics rather than the music, as it is a fairly generic beat.

Demand of close-ups from record label (motif): There are frequent close-ups of Jay Z. However, there are also consistent close-ups of residents of Brooklyn; giving the video a realistic motif throughout, depicting real-life situations.

Frequent reference to the notion of looking: There is a reference to paparazzi; shown through mug-shot being taken (Romanek's ditinct style of trying to make some shots like they are taken by a camera-flash). You could also argue that footage of Jay Z performing in a small club could refer to the notion of looking.

Intertextuality: The song features the lyric 'I got 99 problems but a b***h ain't one) which is a sample of the artist Ice-T's song '99 problems'.