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Jay-Z's Song 'The Story Of Oj'

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In Jay-Z’s music video for his song The Story of Oj, he uses the effect of a black and white colored video. This theme of black and white or black versus white is the main basis of the song and video. In each scene all of the “characters” are in correlation to the Black Face cartoons of the 1930’ and 50’s. which are all dark black faces with big, wide, white lips. He presents the idea of labels within the black community in his lyrics. By saying “Light N****, Dark N****, Faux N****, Real N****, Rich N****, Poor N****, House N****, Field N****, still n****, still n****.”. Jay-Z uses this as his chorus and is repeatedly said. The chorus shows that African Americans separate themselves from their culture by using these labels and not just saying that they are “Black”. Showing that no matter what you are still a “N****”, and that you should not assimilate to the “white man”. …show more content…

The visual is a cotton mill, where the bundles of cotton go in and the output is members of the KKK. This symbolizes that what the slaves were doing by being forced to pick cotton was going into the making of the suits of the KKK. This showed that all the work the slaves did, went into the making of those who discriminated them. He also uses the imagery of a boat that had chained slaves that transitioned into a navy ship. This shows that although bringing the slaves to the US was a bad decision, the government covers this with a government name such as the Navy to make it not seem as

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