CSP 6: MUSIC VIDEO – LETTER TO THE FREE – COMMON FT BILAL facts

  • Lonnie Corant Jaman Shuka Rashid Lynn is his real name and his stage name is Common.
  • He is an Rapper, actor, writer, philanthropist, and activist.
  • Common debuted in 1992 with the album ‘Can I borrow a dollar?’
  • Bilal Sayeed Oliver, known as Bilal, is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer.
  • Bilal is noted for his wide vocal range, his work across multiple genres, and his live performances.

NEA MAGAZINE COVER V2 (+Statement OF INTENT)


According to the Internet, children are 27% of the entire population and fall in the DE Social Group. My magazine will serve as a source of escapism and will be relatively cheap, so that people of any social class will be able to afford it. Before I began planning my front cover, I created multiple magazine covers of different styles, to see which one was the most effective at persuading the consumers to buy and was suitable for my target audience. I concluded that having 3 little plugs with photos summarizing the pages in my magazine was the most effective and suitable for my target audience. 

Before planning my magazine cover, I looked at covers of famous gaming magazines and noticed that game characters are predominantly male. The main aim of my magazine is to promote more females into the gaming industry. Elements of my magazine will help to promote female gamers, such as interviews and reviews that are with female gamers. To entice females to buy my magazines, I will use the colours associated with females 

I have also included plugs, such as an interview with a professional gamer as online gaming is very popular with the Youths, so I feel the interview will be relevant to my target audience. The photo of Marian will be an iconic sign within my magazine cover and the “Marian Racers” logo will be an iconic sign, so that the consumer automatically knows that the main article of my magazine is the launch of “Marian Racers”. Finally, I have thought very carefully about the sizing of my magazine, and I have decided on an A4 size of magazine because it will be able to fit into the consumer’s bag. 

I have aimed to represent Marian as radical to create the interpretation that women can be like men, in the fact that they can take on the adventure and action too, rather than stereotyping woman and expecting them to go out and work. I have also designed Marian to have masculine features to remove her sexuality and make her like male characters, as usually female game characters have large breasts, and their body is in an hourglass shape. This is also shown by the posing of Marian, usually females are posing sideways, so that their feminine features are defined, however, I have put Marian in a pose that is not defining her feminine features, thus challenging the dominant ideology and emphasises how women should be equal to men in the sense of their activities. Marian is also wearing clothes that are strategically covering her bottom, challenging the dominant ideology of females and the representation of women on games covers: wearing short clothes that shows a lot of skin to emphasize feminine features. I have also included no makeup on Marian, to also challenge the dominant ideology and emphasise how women and men should be represented truthfully, as not all females are the same as what is represented by the dominant ideology.   

The cultivation theory says that by creating more media challenging the dominant ideology, you will be able to change people’s theories. On my magazine cover, I am cultivating the idea of equality for both males and females. This is shown by the common occurrence of females doing more male orientated activities, such as Marian (a female) is a female rally car driver, challenging the dominant ideology that only men can participate in car racing. 

Letter to the free – Social, political, cultural, historical context.

What significant historical and political events does Common reference? ​

  • Slavery – specifically the civil war between north and south USA
  • Jim crow laws and how they changed / developed through to the laws being abolished.
  • The transition from slavery to the Jim Crow laws and how white Americans reasserted their dominance over newly free black slaves.

What modern social and cultural movements will impact the reading of this text?​

  • Civil rights movement – more specifically, the black lives matter campaign.
  • Mass incarceration.

Letter to the free

  • What significant historical and political events does Common reference? ​

Slavery-1776 till 1865 when it was abolished with the 13th amendment.

13th amendment- This was when slavery was abolished , however there was a loop hole in which white people still use to use black people for labor. It reads’ “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”

segregation- after the american civil war, slavery was abolished which meant that slaves were free, however white people didn’t want to be around black people. The wants to assert there dominance and therefore Jim crow laws were put into place.

Jim crow laws- separate toilets,drinking places, seating in cinema, no black and white schools, couldn’t eat together in public= not equal

Political- Woodrow Wilson extended these laws into the work place.

Mass incarceration- Prisons are privately owned therefore to keep it open prisoners are needed, therefore African Americans are being pulled up for minor things and are being put in jail for months/years, as he says ….’ Institution ain’t just a building But a method, of having black and brown bodies fill them’

‘Drug abuse’ was the excuse to put blacks away, this was a way to reintroduce segregation subtly. Common says this this the words… ‘nigga’ they use the word ‘criminal’

KKK- Black people were being hung from trees, as seen in letter to the free when he says ‘ southern trees we hung from’, the kkk was made to ‘keep black people in place’ and to scary them. It was a group of white people, which originated from a film shown in cinemas.

Black lives matter movement- this is a movement that campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people.

letter to the free: social, political, cultural, historical context

  • slavery finally abolished in the southern united states after the end of the american civil war in 1865
  • segregation laws used in southern states post-reconstruction to segregate blacks from whites
  • little interest in genuinely freeing black people from the northern political class
  • civil rights movement in the 1960s wins legal rights for black americans, but more radical groups (BPP, NoI/OAAU, new afrikan/black belt nationalist movement) suppressed
  • mass incarceration (via the war on drugs – crack cocaine epidemic started by the CIA) used to imprison vast numbers of black people in private prisons
  • prisoners used for slave labour in private prisons
  • protests over police brutality (ferguson uprising etc.)

Letter to the free: SOCIAL, POLITICAL, CULTURAL, HISTORICAL CONTEXT​

We dealt with the whole subject matter from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration which is what we’re dealing with right now,” he explained. “We wanted to make something that was strong, unapologetic, but that was also hopeful.” (Billboard.com)

What significant historical and political events does Common reference?

Common references the Jim Crow which links to segregation. In example black and white would sit on different carriages, they weren’t allowed to sit together and go to the separate schools. Jim Crow was also a way of the whites regaining power after slavery being abolished.

There was connotations to slavery including how slavery still exists in the sense of prisons and how there hasn’t been any change in racial profiling as they can be sent to prison for the smallest things.

What modern social and cultural movements will impact the reading of this text?​​

“for America to rise you need black lives”

Black lives matter

Letter to the FREE Context

Slavery happened from 1619- 1865 when the Civil War was won by the North in the 13th Amendment. However there was segregation under the Jim Crow laws that separated black and white people in public, on buses and in school.

This was prevalent under the Civil Rights Movement under Martin Luther King JR in 1955. However there is still mass incarceration for unjust causes which mainly effects black people who are being imprisoned to make money.

Common says that slavery has not truly been abolished as many people are being imprisoned for no reason which provokes movements such as Black Lives Matter.

CSP 6 – Letter to the free by Common

Lonnie Corant Jaman Shuka Rashid Lynn, better known by his stage name Common, is an American rapper, actor, writer, philanthropist, and activist. Worth $45 million.

When asked about the song’s timeliness, especially as America transitions into a new presidency under Donald Trump, Common told Billboard, “When I say, We ain’t seen as human beings with feelings/ Will the U.S. ever be us, Lord willing,” that hasn’t changed with the election of Donald Trump. Those things are there. Now it’s just probably going to be in our face even more, and we know we have to resolve it and be the vessel for the change.”

His output is highly politicised, existing in the context of a variety of social and cultural movements aimed at raising awareness of racism and its effects in US society (e.g.: Black Lives Matter). The product can also be considered in an economic context through the consideration of if and how music videos make money (through, for example, advertising on YouTube).

  • As the soundtrack to the Netflix documentary The 13th the video is an example of cross media promotion and marketing.

Letter to the free music video

  • Black and white could represent how everyone should be equal.
  • instrumentalists all in different rooms
  • No one really acknowledges the camera
  • ends with an outside view of the building they were inside of
  • low budget
  • black box at the end that supposedly represents blackness.
  • old run down building