Picasso Baby

At the beginning of the film, Jay speaks about energy and the flow of energy; about

taking energy from crowds and figuring out what to do with it. "Today, it's kind of an

exchange," he says. "There's somewhere to drop it back off.“ This is referencing the

interaction from the crowd, which introduces Stuart Hall‟s reception theory in this music

video; where audiences decode the encoded text and interact with the media. In this

case, the crowd in the venue directly interact with Jay Z and, as he says, “it‟s more

intimate” because of the size of the crowd and venue.

Picasso Baby contains a great proportion of audience interaction and participation. It

has a representation of every class and race. It isn‟t representing a particular style.

The only thing you don‟t see is a representation of any disability, in terms of the

people.

Going back to Jay Z‟s comment of the intimacy between the smaller crowd and

himself, this energy is displayed throughout the whole music video where the visuals

often display Jay facing an individual rather than a group of people as he‟s

performing/rapping. This contains similarities to the traditional, „underground‟, hip-hop

cyphers where participants would battle each other, one to one, with a group of people

around, in order to be named the better lyricist.

Majority of audiences aren‟t too fond of hip-hop. It has a niche audience of

predominantly young people. For example, many females dislike hip-hop as they may

view it as misogynistic and dangerous. It is labelled as offensive and aggressive by

many. The fact that the live interacting audience in this media text are all of different age

groups, occupations, genders and backgrounds hijacks the concept of hip-hop having a

niche audience.

The documentary finds Jay-Z performing the song to several different people –

sometimes a celebrity or an artist, sometimes a fan – each one at a time. This isn‟t the

typical idea for a hip hop music video. This unique element is what makes it stand out.

The song mainly contains two parts. The first two verses are filled with references to

artists like Rothko and Koons, and the museums like the MOMA and Tate Modern. It can

also be considered to be parodying user-generated content.

Uses and Gratifications theory can be applied here as the audience are evidently

enjoying themselves and the concept of the visuals is entertaining. The boundary

between producer and consumer is broken because the audience are directly interacting

with Jay Z in the art gallery as he‟s performing. The fact that they are all enjoying

themselves promotes Jay as a charismatic and charming individual which makes him

more of a likeable artist. Andrew Goodwin‟s theory can be applied to this media text due

to the relation of the lyrics and the visuals, the broken boundary between producer and

consumer is also demonstrated in the music video where the audience are not longer

spaced out in a large circle but break that barrier and all surround Jay.

The song‟s second half sounds angrier as it deals with crime and punishment: “My

Miranda don‟t stand a chance with cops.” In the film, during the second part, the

barrier between the crowd lined up around the walls and the room‟s centre – Jay and

his audience of one – is broken, and everyone rushes towards him. This enhances

Andrew Goodwin‟s theory of relation between lyrics and visuals.

Picasso Baby can be seen as postmodern because of its bending of the rules of music

videos, hip-hop and music culture as a whole. An example of this is the length of the

music video – 10:46 minutes. This isn‟t the usual length for typical visuals of a track. It is

more of a documentary rather than a music video. Hence, the title states “A

Performance Art Film”. This shows that a music video needs to be unique in order to

captivate audience‟s attention.

With the development of digital technology, music videos are now widely available on

contemporary media and websites such as YouTube. Therefore, the rapid increase in

quantity of videos means that it is more difficult for an artist to stand out and

market/distribute their products. In this modern day and age, the idea of what constitutes

a music video has altered.

Artists would need a video which stands out due to the frequency of videos being

distributed. In order to stand out, their videos would require to create content which

contains a strong concept. Furthermore, with social networking websites such as Twitter

and Facebook rapidly increasing, artists would ultimately need to get

likes/views/comments/shares in order to market themselves and promote their material.

A bog standard hip hop video would probably fail to thrill.

Another reason as to why “Picasso Baby” is postmodern is the blending of media and

intertextual referencing. The title itself is referencing notorious artist Pablo Picasso. Jay

also references artists such as Andy Warhol in his lyrics, as well as the “MoMA”, being

the Museum of Modern Art.

The visual style of the music video is very much art-related; the location is in an art

gallery, with bright colours, predominantly white and it also contains artists itself, for

instance; Marina Abramovic and references to popular artists such as Mark Rothko, Jeff

Koons, Francis Bacon, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as world-famous painting

Mona Lisa. The pace of the editing isn‟t too fast or too slow but pretty much in time with

the music, creating a sense of verisimilitude.

The blending of music and art is very postmodern and something of which audiences

will derive pleasure from because its bending the rules of media. They would also feel a

sense of satisfaction from recognising the intertextual references in the lyrics. This goes

back to Stuart Hall‟s theory of the decoding audience. It relies on cultural understanding

of the artists in order to comprehend and interpret the references; this is an element

which makes it postmodern.

Picasso Baby also impacts Jay Z‟s star image. Jay is stigmatised as the drug dealer-

turned rapper who references his lifestyle and the dealing of illegal drugs in his music. He

talks about how his past travels with him wherever he goes. Regardless of his success or

what he has achieved, people would still look at him as the “guy on the corner who sold

crack”. However, this song is ultimately about art and his image is altered.

In the film and other interviews, he discusses how art and music are “cousins” and

“related”. This re-invents his image and develops it as he wants to be more devoted to art.

He claims to have paintings in his house and its been reported that he has purchased art

worth millions. Jay is an icon in the world of hip hop and is also a very successful

entrepreneur. With repetitive references to Pablo Picasso and the song being very

focused on art, swaying from his drug dealer image, it can be argued that he is hip hop‟s

equivalent to Picasso. Hence, his last line “What‟s it gon‟ take for you to see, I‟m the

modern-day Pablo?”