Goodwin's Theory - Genre Characteristics - R&B

R&B Music

The main conventions of  R&B music videos are:

• Girls wearing minimal clothing, long hair, slim
• Male artists usually where low raised jeans, with a top and a jacket.
• With the male artists they usually have a woman or women with them dancing sexily who they are singing too.
• With female artists they also have a man in the video that generally are topless in the videos. This is because R and B song are generally about relationships.
• Sunglasses is a prop that is used a lot along with a lot of jewellery (bling) this connotes that they have a lot of money and wealthy.
• A lot of close ups of the artist lip singing             
• Expensive brand new cars/ motorbikes
• Locations are of places in sunny destinations (the beach is a popular place, along with clubs and bars.
• Some R&B artists use special effects to create a unusual dynamic background with lots of colours like the black eyed peas video ‘Boom Boom Pow’
• The performance of the videos is generally the artist being stationary lip singing or often they use tracking shots to follow them walking, this enforces the idea that the audience is actually there.

The target audience for this type of music would be for teenagers from 12 and up to the age of 30.

 The CD cover for R&B album or cover would normally include an image of the artist for girls they would be dressed sexily in tight minimal clothing. For example Beyonce's CD cover is of her in a sexy pose. The colours used are basic black and white with her name in large letters which draws all the attention here. The lighting used here is cleverly done so the consumer is drawn into the middle of the image. Many female artists have these conventions, and many have their own unique designs as their background on the CD cover, for example Alicia keys CD cover for the element of freedom, all links together with the images and colours used on her own official website.

 For men its very similar many of the conventions see in their videos are also shown on CD covers for example props like shades, costume and also sometimes the location is the same. Some of them also have dynamic background but many of them have a simpler effect have gone for black and white colour scheme.