I Need A Doctor by Dr. Dre featuring Eminem & Skylar Grey

I Need a Doctor is an American Hip Hop song by Dr Dre with added vocals by Eminem and Skylar Grey. Released in 2011, the song features a 7 minute music video even though the song is only 5 minutes long. The song is about the relationship between Dr. Dre and Eminem and how they have helped each other out in making music and having such a long career. The song features lots of archive footages and montages of Dr. Dre’s life in music but also his personal life.

The song for the music video doesn’t start for almost 3 minutes of the video. In that time we see Dr Dre driving a Ferrari 360, with flashbacks of his life. Not including the song for so long would have been done to give enables the audience to understand the narrative of the music video. In my music video I don’t start the song for a few seconds however only to introduce the artist and the plot. However by not playing the song at the very start enables the audience to concentrate on the music video more than the song. The I Need A Doctor music video is 7 minutes long which is unconventionally long compared to most music video meaning the artist needs to get the audience interested in watching the song the whole way through.

During my research on music video I have been able to identify one key element of them, which is promoting the artist. However the music video received complaints on having so much product placement with Ferrari, G-Shock, HP, Gatorade, and Dr. Dre's own headphones. For example the Ferrari sequence is 2 minutes long and acts as one long advert showing the car off. If you took the shots of the car zooming along the road you could easily make it into an advert. On top of this the video features lots of old clips of Dr Dre’s old music, almost acting as an advert to get people to look at his old material. Although product placement and promotion for the artist is key in a music video, this can be overdone and make the song no better than the 30 second advert which plays prior to the song on YouTube.

The song has many references to artists in the music world with the likes of Eazy-E, 2Pac, The D.O.C, Snoop Dogg, Warren G, Eminem, Xzibit and members from N.W.A. This is done as a way of showing Dr Dre’s long career and his power in the world. This is an element many rap artist like to express although the power Dr Dre shown is almost contradicted near the ending of the music video with him in rehabilitation recovering from his injuries. This shows the artist as weak and dependent on others. This is an unconventional trait for a major rap artist by showing him vulnerable.

In conclusion, the music video helps in how artists and directors make a music video have a good plot but still done in limited time, although the music video is far longer to the rest of the song the video is still short when compared to other media texts that have a narrative. In my music video I can look at the shots in this video to see what I need to include making the story clear to the audience.

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