Background Research on Our Artist

BACKGROUND RESEARCH
BORN AND BRED IN NORTH WEST LONDON.

PRINCESS LANDA

I’ve searched all over the internet to try and find some sort of background information about our artist. This was difficult as she is unsigned and hasn’t got a lot of recognition from the public yet. Luckily, browsing through YouTube, I found a clip of Princess Landa being interviewed by Rudie Rich on ‘Sun up Radio’. This interview was fundamentally about the viewers getting to know the artist herself and about her hit ‘Ni time Fi Dem’. This gave me an idea as to what person she’s like, what her intentions of the song were and her overall perception of her music. She admits to not being a DJ before this song and prefers to be classified as a singer and song writer. With this song in particular, it was ‘unplanned’ and describes the song as ‘having fun’. According to her, most of her music in general is about having fun and are about things/topics that other people may hesitate to talk about.

‘Ni time Fi Dem’ means ‘No time For Them’. This song obviously revolves around the artists. She’s talking not having time for anyone, that she doesn’t need anyone as they’ll just hold her back. When I hear this, I visualise men trying to get the attention with materialistic objects, for example; money, jewellery, male (dancers) showing off their looks of which the artist would push them away. I can imagine dancers re-enacting movement when males ‘try it’ with them but they would show that they’re not interested. Because this song is specifically about the artist, there should be a strong use of mise-en-scene of which every person in the video should use/wear in order to show this.

A LINK TO HER INTERVIEW WITH RUDIE RICH:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYuhiVpwhRQ

 Looking at this image, she's wearing a very hung low top showing clevege. However, her breasts are not hightlighted with bright lights or enhanced with extra padding etc. From this image, she's obviously not a size '0', which already in a way is challenging mainstream conventions of young females artists on the whole. However, being a dancehall/reggae female artist, her suductive pose and cleveage reinforce mainstream ideas of female artists as being sex figures for men.

For our music video, I intend to do both; reinforce mainstream ideas about female dancehall/reggae artist in order to attract the Jamaican (and other) cultures which reinforce this idea in their society. I also intend to challenge mainstream conventions and in order to this I will think abuot the mise-en-scene of the video in more depth.
Here's her interview with Rudie Rich talking about her single 'No time Fi Dem' and 'The Streets'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYuhiVpwhRQ