Critique on Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment – Sunday Candy “Short Film”

This music video has revolutionized the concept of music video for me. Usually a music video (or any other kinds of video) is a product of combining different shots and takes. However, this music video, or “Short Film” is taken in one shot: from the beam projector shooting “Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment” on a curtain all the way to all the dancers clapping and celebrating. Another shocking fact about this music video is that it only uses one camera throughout the whole entire music video. From the little information that I have on film and camera, I assume that they used Jimmy Jib cranes to record their “Short Film.”

Besides from the music video, I simply love this song. I remember listening to it for the first time in my friend’s car and falling in love with it. This song has all the features I love. It has funky, jazzy, hip-hop, and gospel elements to it. Chance the Rapper starts off this song by rapping, “She can say in her voice, in her way that she love me.” From listening to this first line, I automatically assumed that this song is yet another song about love and relationship. However, as the song goes on it is made clear that this is not just another ordinary love song about two lovers; It is a song about love between grandmother and her grandson. And this is why I love Chance the Rapper. He is unconventional. He breaks the norm.

Although the tunes will lure you in right away, it is hard to understand what he is talking about at first. If you are listening for the first time, you probably would not know that this song is about his grandmother. I remember bobbing my head to this music without really understanding what it meant in my friend’s car. However, as you listen to and look into lyrics it all starts to make sense. You realize that the “president” (“president of my fan club”) and “you” (“you are my dream capture, dream team, team captain”) is his grandmother that he is referring to.

Also, it is exciting to see how smoothly he incorporates the element of faith into his music (again UNCONVENTIONAL). There are countless references to the experiences of church and faith that he had through his grandmother. And in the chorus of his song he implicitly mentions about the communion and in the hook, he explicitly mentions about “Zion.”

Another unconventional and untraditional aspect of Chance the Rapper is his decision to not charge money for the music that he produces. This is unheard of in today’s music industry. Since most artists are tied down by a label or a company, most of them do not have much say when it comes to marketing. However, because Chance the Rapper chooses not to be a part of label or company he is able to make an individualistic decision of releasing his music for free.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.