




How powerful are music videos?  Can they be political?  Can they actually make a difference in the world?  These are all questions one might ask himself after viewing a Vince Staples music video.  Staples constantly pushes himself to create visual content for his songs that somehow mention or let the viewer see a different perspective of a certain issue in the world.  Different perspectives are extremely important in order for everybody to understand a specific situation.  If one person only has their own external perspective of an issue that could only truly be understood by someone who is actually living firsthand within the issue, they will live life thinking they know the truth when in reality it could be the complete opposite.  Staples pinpoints this exact situation with his music video for “Señorita.”  Looking at the concept of minorities being killed off throughout the video and the caged in feeling we get at the very end of the video, we can interpret that the music video is saying even minorities who are just roaming the street get killed every day for no real reason.

Throughout the entire music video there is a main concept being shown: minorities seemingly being killed off, one by one.  There is a group of people walking down the road in what seems to be a dystopian society where minorities are caged in, almost like a huge jail cell outside.  There are giant turrets targeting the minorities which are a metaphor for the times when the police senselessly kill people in areas where minorities live.  They live day-to-day in their homes but are unaware of what will happen to them if they walk outside.  All but one of the people walking down the road have their heads down and are acting sluggish.  The one person in the front has his head held up, looking towards the sky with a bible in his hands.  He is looking up at God in hopes that even considering the hellish place in which he lives, God will spare him and let him survive the senseless killing of the people behind him.

The awful conditions the people in the video live in are without a doubt purposeful.  The entire concept of the minorities getting killed is beautifully completed in the last minute of the music video.  We start to see people’s faces press against what seems to be a pane of glass.  They are pressing against the wall of the cage they’re living inside of.  The man that was in front of the crowd of people with the bible is now standing still, looking at a small white family.  The white family is sitting in a museum like setting all protected and viewing the man in front through the pane of glass.  They’re viewing him from outside of the cage.  This is a symbol for the strong differences in white families and minorities.  The rich white families sit back and can view the lives and terrible living conditions of the minorities while the minorities are actual human beings having to live in these terrible conditions while people just watch and don’t realize it is a very serious issue in the world.  The song also switches when the video transitions from inside the cage to outside of the cage.  Inside of the cage the music is aggressive and violent, just like the living conditions of the people.  Outside of the cage the music is soft and elegant, like the living conditions of the white family.  Life for many minorities is like living inside of a cage, trapped.  Life for many white families is like going to a museum to view something that they will never have to worry about: being a minority.

Music videos can definitely be political and most of Staples’ videos are.  He sheds light on certain topics which the majority of his demographic, young adults, may be ignorant of.  Doing this through music videos and rap music is a very smart way of enlightening young adults about serious and sometimes political topics.  The reason for this is because young adults may have their mind focused on pretty much everything that is not politics.  It’s very important that Staples raps about and visually shows the struggle adult minorities go through because some young adult minorities may not have fully experienced the struggle yet and they need to be educated on what life is actually like, rather than a false reality.