After battling my way through Windows Movie Maker, I finally finished my digital essay. Surprisingly I really enjoyed this part of the essay and I had fun making the video. My essay was on homosexuality in the hip hop industry. The theme was inspired by Macklemore’s song “Same Love.” I had a lot of ideas for my video but the problem was, how do I make a short video with everything and shows the message I want my viewers to see? I started to outline my video the way I outlines my essay. So I started the first half of the video by giving a definition of homophobia and then provided examples of homophobia in hip hop. The first video was Drake, when he as an actor on Degrassi, getting criticized because on the show he was a gay teen. I started off with Drake because I personally believe he is a well spoken artist and he is a supporter of gay rights. He doesn’t criticize the decisions of other people. The next couple of clips include rappers such as Maino, Game, Fat Joe, and Tyler the Creator saying how gay people infest the world and the hip hop game. Fat Joe even goes on to say the rap game is controlled by a ‘gay mafia.”
The second half of the video shows acceptance of homosexuality in the hip hop industry and shows change happening. I started off with a video of Frank Ocean right after the Tyler the Creator video for a reason. Tyler and Frank Ocean are in the same rap group, Odd Future. Even though you can see Tyler the Creator acknowledging that him and his friend in the video are not gay because he has his arm on his friends shoulder. But Frank Ocean, knowing that Tyler uses excessive homophobic content in his music, was brave enough to openly admit his relationship with another man disregarding what his friends might think about him. Then the next slides have old school rappers such as Jadakiss,Snoop Lion, and Kanye West talking about how gays have a huge positive impact on hip hip and the world we live in. The Kanye West portion was taped in early 2000 when homosexuality was not a big issue but he still addressed it and I found that to be admirable which is why I added it to my video. These rappers were around when hip hop and homosexuality could not mix but now they are promoting gay artists and gay rights. I ended the video off with the man himself, Macklemore, and his reason on why he made his song. I think what he has to say is very inspiring and shows how passionate he is about his songs and its message. The last slide shows the definition of equality. I put this in because it shows the change in my video from homophobia content to equality. You can watch my video here..
