Parks (2007) and Giddens (1991) suggest that the pace of social change is much faster than prior
systems to disseminate music videos across social and geographical boundaries. I apply White’s
notion (2012) to the medium of music videos specifically and to online platforms posted on YouTube.
I argue that the affordances of online music videos allow musical artists to construct hybrid identities,
and disseminate cultural, racial, and class ideologies through processes of globalization. I explore
spaces and processes of othering and power relations in creating both inclusive and exclusive
communities through signifiers in visual, auditory, and textual modes of music videos. The medium
of music videos also allows both fans and critics to participate in decoding Drake’s songs, their lyrics,
his star image, and the wider conversations about race, class, religion and culture.
Many of Drake’s music videos can be seen as a form of modern day “travel journals” (Sheller,
2003) as he includes representations of different places and cultures. Since these images are
mediated and can only articulate particular aspects of people or places, it is similar to that of a
researcher creating travel journals, by including aspects of locations or communities based on their
own perspectives and interests. Drake’s narrated messages in his music videos are constructed in
terms of what topics, images, and lyrics are used to represent a particular star image. Sheller (2003)
discusses text and images involving the objectification of bodies through visualization and places as
editable commodities, for touristic viewing. Music videos are to be consumed by the masses, to sell
the song and construct the star image of the artist. This framing should not only be described through
the voyeuristic gaze but also as a demonstration of strategically constructing one’s own identity in
the sphere of online communication.
The average length of a music video is only a few minutes; hence, Drake challenges viewers to
read these audio-visual texts as short narratives that are indicative of his past experiences. To
understand how these narratives engage with gender, race, and class, viewers must decode the
images, sounds, and lyrics (Hall, 1973). Viewers must follow a particular sequence of images and
sounds, as constructed by editing techniques such as pacing, cutting, close up shots and angles, to
interpret the meaning of the video and the song. I analyze how Drake uses the multimodal
affordances of the music video to construct specific narratives through sounds, images, and objects.
When applying time-space inherent relationships (Giddens, 1991) to music videos, artists must be
selective in using particular ideoscapes and mediascapes (Appadurai, 1990) to create their identities
through a directed message. I apply Appadurai’s (1990) concepts of ideoscapes and mediascapes to
the medium of music videos. Ideoscapes and mediascapes are two or the five factors that contribute
to the global exchange of ideas and information. Each scape presents inherent power relations and
multiple understandings of “realities”. Within each of these dimensions, Appadurai (1990) suggests
that an idea or image changes its context depending on the spectator. “Mediascapes refer both to the
distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information” (Appadurai, 1990,
p.298); hence, mediascapes are used in this study to describe how hybrid identities are affected by
media and communications technologies. I state the complexity of how music videos impact viewers
and create imagined worlds and how they work to construct “ideoscapes” which “are composed
of …ideas, terms and images [and] was constructed with a certain internal logic and presupposed a
certain relationship between reading, representation and the public sphere” (Appadurai, 1990,