In the music video, “Aston Martin Music” by Rick Ross featuring Drake, Ross expresses his contentment about achieving a form of personal success through rap music. In the beginning of the video, there is a small clip of a young boy who wishes to own an expensive car when he grows up. The video and lyrics seamlessly transitions into the artist driving around in a luxurious Aston Martin (car) and singing about his lavish lifestyle. At the 3:06 mark, Ross begins to fill two glasses of Cîroc but ironically never shows the cups again. This minor prop can be looked over carelessly, but its significance plays a huge role.
I believe it indicates his achievement and success from his upbringing and represents a major accomplishment. In the urban/hip hop community, success is frequently showcased through the showing-off of expensive cars, glistening jewelry, fashionable clothing and the consumption of fancy alcoholic beverages. Therefore, the bottle of Cîroc doesn’t just signify another worthless prop in the video in order to make up time for the song to finish, but as a representation of his achievement of “making it.” As Cîroc might not be the most significant prop in the entire video, it indirectly supports the message of the video. You cannot directly correlate liquor to success, unless you understand Ross’ background in regards to his youth and what that specific community looks up too. The bottle of Cîroc has a deeper meaning than what one might initially assume.
I like that you focused on a specific object. I also like that you time stamped your reference. Good job! I would say though that it almost seems like you have the beginning of an F2 paper if you were to do more research on Cîroc in the community Drake comes from (I think you’re implying black community, but I think you’d need to be more specific about where Drake comes from, starting with him being Canadian and being after the age of 5 raised by his white Jewish mother.). In terms of a close reading where you pick Follow the Trail or Archeological Dig, I feel like you’re in the middle. You don’t follow the trail. You stay with that one moment, but you also don’t analyze that one detail in relation to other elements in that moment to see how they work together.
Some questions to ask are what does the Cîroc signify that the car does not or that big ring or the necklaces don’t? Also there are a lot more figures in this video than Drake. He’s not even the only rapper on the track and in terms of the plot line of the story that the video relays he actually seems to be tangential. So whose story/song is this? What are the other figures doing?