Analysis Of Videos 4 (Lil Wayne ft Jay Z - Mr Carter)

The artist of this song is Lil Wayne; however Jay Z features in the song. The song title is Mr Carter, and the song is from the album ‘Tha Carter III’.

The song is predominantly about Lil Wayne reportedly going missing for a while, and now he has come back on the scene and is now addressing his fans again, we see this in the lyrics because one of the lyrics are “hey Mr Carter, tell me where have you been?”

This song is also about Lil Wayne’s fans asking where he has been because he had been off the scene so his fans were worrying when he was going to release a new song. But Lil Wayne also used this song to reassure his fans of his devotion to music and that he will never completely leave music, this is again shown in the lyrics “two words ya never hear, Wayne quit”

The main content of the video is Lil Wayne returning to his home town and catching up with his friends, we see him in several different scenarios with different people, a few of these are with boys and another is with a girl, this shows that he is catching up with his friends that he hasn’t seen in a while and possibly a girlfriend that he is eager to get back together with after his absence.

The first 45 second of this video shows Lil Wayne in a few different locations, showing that he is just trying to cover as many places as he can to catch up with as many people as he can, because of how long he has been away, the lyrics are mainly just the main chorus “Hey Mr Carter, tell me where have you been?” so overall the first 45 seconds are just breaking the viewers into the song.

The second 45 seconds shows Lil Wayne with different people and even more different locations, he is cuddling and shaking hands with people, showing that he has missed his friends while he has been away and has lots to share with them, the lyrics give us more of an idea as to where Lil Wayne has been, because the lyrics say; “around the world and now I’m back again”, so this could give the impression that he has gone on a long trip to get his mind off of music for a while.

The third 45 seconds focuses on Lil Wayne addressing his friends, and letting his friends now that he is back in town, the video shows Lil Wayne in a car with a man and they are enjoying themselves, laughing and joking, so we assume that they have been friends for a long time and they were really close before Lil Wayne went away. He again uses the lyrics “around the world and now I’m back again” – he also uses the lyrics “I am here”. This just reassures everyone that Lil Wayne is back.

The fourth 45 seconds is the last time we see Lil Wayne in the video on his own because Jay Z begins his part of the song, in the video we just see Lil Wayne occasionally among his friends and the attention turns to Jay Z.

The type of video is mainly a narrative type of video, however it could also be deemed as a mixture of abstract and performance, this is because there is no main storyline. There is a bit of performance but not enough to determine the video as a performance video. And there is no specific structure because of the montage editing used.