“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 enhances Stuart Hall‟s reception theory; 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.

Uses and Gratifications theory can be applied here as the audience

are evidently enjoying themselves and the concept of the visuals is

entertaining.

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. 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.

Andrew Goodwin‟s theory can be applied here due to the relation of

the lyrics and the visuals.

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.

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”.

Another reason as to why it‟s postmodern is the blending of media and

intertextual referencing. The title itself is referencing notorious artist

Pablo Picasso. The visuals are very much art-related; containing

artists like Marina Abramovic and the location being an art gallery. Jay

also references artists such as Andy Warhol in his lyrics, as well as the

“MoMA”, being the Museum of Modern Art.

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 the references;

this is an element which makes it postmodern.