Roll Deep Shake A Leg

Roll deep

Shake a leg

• The ‘Shake a leg’ video by Roll deep consists of a narrative based sequence where the band are persuaded to play a gig by UK DJ Westwood, the gig is set in a glamorous club with a selection of fashionable dressed party people, which are enjoying the music and all dancing, the witty lyrics go on to unfold the happenings on screen.

• I think there is a strong link between the lyrics and visuals in the roll deep video, the song is narrative based and the video corresponds to out live the story. This is evident is most grime artists music video similar to roll deep. An example of the close relationship between the lyrics and visual is seen at 1.18 when the lyric ‘you know what would be handy a little glass of brandy’ is said in the video the artists is handed a glass of brandy. This close relationship represents the bands style as witty youths by using almost comical lyrics.

Link between lyrics and visuals

• I think the music genre is easily identifiable as grime because of the choreographed dances, stereotypical grime artist’s image of young black male wearing baggy clothes, a new era hat and gold jewellery, and the use of mise en scene and camerawork. The video is set in a glamorous bar wear every one is dresses very fashionable, the bar looks exclusive, like there are only the coolest people are dancing to there music which adds to there glamorous star image. The camera work used is mainly shots of the band which enhances the artists profile, using portrait shots of the artist as the main figure shows that the artist star image is important and that the video is about more than just music the artists image is important and goes with the fast pace lyrics and conveys the conventions of a grime music video.

Extract showing the glamorous set and fashionable dressed people dancing.

• There are example’s of voyeurism especially in the treatment of women, in the video women are heavily portrayed as sex objects, this is by the use of revealing choreographed dances, when there are shots of the dancing audience there is nearly always a close up of a young girl wearing skimpy clothes doing a suggestive dance this along with the lyric’s which are in some parts are derogatory towards women contribute heavily to represent women as sex objects. The lyric ‘now I move on to your girl friend, me dancing with your girl is like girlfriend’ this lyric represents women as being less important almost like slaves

to the big shot artists.

Example of skimpy dressed girl dancing in a suggestive way, derogatory towards women.

• There are intertextual references between the well known radio DJ and television presenter Westwood, Westwood is know for working with upuncoming grime and hip hop artists in the UK, by including him in the video automatically introduces the band as being British, being a grime or hip hop artist and being reasonably well know. Westwood is like a quest appearance in the video he isn’t part of there music just part of there street image, the roll deep exclusive image is emphasised by using them mocking Westwood at the start of the video he is persuading roll deep to do this gig and offering money to them to which they respond by disrespecting and mocking Westwood by refusing to shake his hand, this makes them seam uncaring and too cool to be bothered about money or making it big.

Extract showing DJ Westwood and roll deep, they play very different characters.