Ludacris ft. Mary J. Blige

Runaway Love

Joan D Lynch identifies 3 basic music video structures: One centred on performance, a narrative and videos strongly influenced by experimental film. This video is without a doubt a narrative as a story is told by visuals which complete and extend the lyrical content of the song.

Narrative music videos can also be subcategorised as Steve Jones reveals in ‘Cohesive But Not Coherent: Music Videos, Narrative and Culture’. Jones states that there are three separate types of narrative; mimetic (the representation of a concert performance), analog (A non-concert performance of the song with other material) and digital (no performance). ‘Runaway Love’ can be placed under the analog field as it includes short clips of the artists performing off stage with no relation to the story.

The lyrics to ‘Runaway Love’ tells the story of three young girls having to deal with a mother’s drug addiction, an abusive/alcoholic step-father and pregnancy. The video which accompanies the song serves the main purpose of illustrating the story of the song.

Key moments in the song/story have been narrated visually to emphasis. For example Ludacris raps: ‘Until one day little Stacy gets shot, a drive-by bullet went straight up on her block’. During this line, the video shows a convertible with gang members executing a drive-by with the young girl and Stacy shown caught in the crossfire.

Goodwin identifies that, typically, the music video relates to the genre of music it is representing. It is therefore rare to find genres such as folk to have a music video set in ghettos associated with hip-hop and rap music.

‘Runaway Love’ confirms this as Ludacris and Mary J Blige are both big names in the Hip-hop/Rap/R&B industries. When the music starts, the first shot is a long shot of both artists standing in front of an underpass littered with graffiti. This instantly suggests to the viewer the links between what type of neighbourhood the video is set in and genre. The mise-en-scene throughout the music video portrays the ghetto neighbourhood also with frequent graffiti appearances.