Research: Textual Analysis (Drake - Marvins Room)

"Marvins Room"

Starting with the audio of the song, Marvins Room is a song of a genre with a mix between Hip Hop, Rap and RnB. It deals with Drake drunk-dialing a past girlfriend, even though she has now got a new boyfriend. He proceeds to tell her that "You can do better", he also tells her about his sex life and how he's had sex with 4 different women in a week but neither of them satisfy him as they "all feel the same". The songs production by Noah "40" Shebib matches the theme of the lyrics with muted base and slow tempo's.

The video starts off with the girl that Drake is on the phone to, while she is lying down on her sofa. We hear that she too is intoxicated.

It then cuts to Drake, sitting at a bar at the nightclub on his own, and as he drinks more and more, the scene becomes slightly out of focus, and the shots are jumped and muddled, and the camera circles around him, showing the room spinning as he gets more and more drunk.

After chatting to a woman at the party, he makes his way over to his group of friends, and they too are drinking and also smoking cannabis. there are alot of quick shots cut to the music to show the different scenes.

Up to this point the music video has been strictly narrative and Drake is not lip syncing to the audio neither is he performing any of the lyrics. He starts performing when the rap verse comes in after about half way through the song which is unusual in most RnB and Rap videos. He is sitting down whilst looking directly looking at the camera as he performs his lyrics in a very somber way, he then makes his way to the toilet to straighten himself out. As he looks at the mirror it is obvious that he is under the influence of drugs and alcohol and that he is in a very depressed and maybe even a lonely mood.

After this the music changes to a "chopped & screwed" version of the song, an experimental sub-genre in hiphop where the vocals become slow, deep in pitch and stuttery, and as does the production. To match this the hue of the visuals become more purple, a colour which is synonymous with the Chopped & Screwed style (because of the purple cough mixture that chopped & screwed stemmed from). Also the visuals become more distorted and the focus often changes, and different shots are placed ontop of one another, with varying opacity levels making them fade in and out. This gives the effect of the drugs and alcohol becoming more and more of an influence.

When the song returns to its normal self, it is the outro, which is a slow piano roll slowly fading away, the video depicts a car journey which is being filmed within the car out the window. This shows Drakes journey home, possibly in the back of a cab as he is unable to drive.

From my analysis of this video I have learnt alot, it has also given me ideas for different shots and effects I could use for my video. The jump cuts used to create an effect of being drunk is something I would like to recreate in my music video as alcohol is a prominent feature of the song. The change in colour and hue used in the video can be used in my project during the "flashback" scenes. The camera shot of the woman on the sofa is similar to how i would like the camera to be positioned in my video, and the quick shots cut to the music is also another thing i would like to include in my music video.