
J. Cole is a rapper from Fayetteville, North Carolina, who was motivated to climb to the top of the rap world.  He usually puts strong messages into his songs instead of just talking about drugs and crime, like other rappers.  Therefore, when making the music video for the song Crooked Smile, he took real-world issues into consideration.  In this video, he takes problems such as police violence and the war on drugs head on with his color contrast, shot angles, and lyrics.  By taking this approach to activism, it is much easier for him to get the attention of the younger generation.  He performed this song on tour and was able to ‘preach’ to thousands and thousands of young people for almost an entire year.  In J Cole’s Crooked Smile music video, he uses the motif of race, with color contrast, shot angles, and lyrics, to show that America is still divided by skin color.


To begin, J Cole interprets the problem of police violence in this music video.  At this point, J Cole younger girl cousin was in bed and heard a noise outside of her bedroom.  As she pokes her head out of the bedroom, the camera goes to a shot in between over-the-shoulder and Point of View.  These shots were used to give the perception of the little girl with the lethality of the cop in her vision.  Once the white DEA officer gets a half-second glimpse of the girl, he shoots her dead.  J Cole depicts the two officers as white males in order to convey the message that there is still racial divide today, even in law enforcement.  There were two other black officers in the group, but they had the white officer kill the girl to make a point.  This shot in the music video also has light contrast as expressed in the Color Theory.  This makes it difficult to not look at the officer because after the frame of the shot is darkened, he is the only part of the shot that is visible.  Clearly, J Cole wanted to draw attention towards the white DEA officer with the gun, so he used a technique called framing.  He made the outside “frame” of the shot dark and only used light shining on the officer as if to highlight the officer.  Framing is a type of color contrast that forces the viewer to only think about the focus of the shot, as there is no foreground or background.  J Cole’s decision of framing is important because it exemplifies the violence between the races as an innocent little girl is about to be killed.     


The music video opens with a series of close-up shots of J Cole and the white DEA officer getting ready in the morning.  These shots were used to show the difference in skin color before this shot in the video.  At this point in the video the viewer knows nothing about the men. The only visible difference is skin color, which J Cole is trying to diffuse with quick shots.  In this particular screen shot the color theory is used to cast a shadow on the father and daughter.  Here, the viewer can not tell if this person is black or white, which, seems to be the only objective J Cole has with this music video.  However, it is clear that the two people in the shot are both smiling and both making direct eye contact.  This shot expresses a lot of happiness even with the amount of darkness that is visibly shown in the shot.  Regardless of race it is clear that this is a couple of happy humans happy to be with each other.

J Cole used lyrics in this song to try to amplify situations that he saw as a kid.  One powerful line from Crooked Smile that J Cole adds is, “Hey officer man, we do not want nobody getting killed, just open up that cell, let my brother out of jail.”  When connected to the music video this says that J Cole does not want anything violent to happen to anyone.  Then, when he sees his ‘brother(s)’ go to jail, for minor drug charges, he wants them to get out since they did not do anything violent.  However, the ones that get to jail are lucky because they do not have to experience the violence that he sees some black people go through when being arrested.  One of the most important lines in the song when reading the lyrics is, “We ain't picture perfect but we worth the picture still.”  He wanted to express that he understands that our society has its flaws, but he still believes it is worth the effort to fix it as much as possible. With this music video J Cole is trying to inspire as many people as he can to take control of the race problem this country has and change it.  J Cole tried to incorporate the current race issue this country has in these music videos in different ways.  He wanted to express the racism that is still challenging this country on a daily basis, and he was able to express these problems fairly well.  The aspects of Crooked Smile that J Cole used helped express to the audience that racial divide is still around in this country.

Before watching these music videos and analyzing the lyrics, this song did not jump out other than for having a good beat.  However, after going back and looking more in-depth, these messages that J Cole was putting into his music were easy to see.  If it is trying to encourage a younger generation, or attacking a 300-year old problem, J Cole turned heads with these songs and music videos.  Many rappers use their songs just to talk about drugs and crimes and get a good beat, but J Cole uses his platform productively to influence as much as he can. 
