Hip hop videos are always an embodiment of street life. Street life is the opposite of someone having all he needs to succeed. Thug life is when you have nothing, and succeed, when you have overcome all obstacles to reach your aim. The Tebatusobola video brings back that aspect of Thug life, packaged in a way that makes it appealing to the general market, as a route to social consciousness.
To bring out the message in the audio, the video features a young boy who is denied a chance to feature in this ghetto football competition. He is dismissed as lacking ability and talent to make it to any of the teams, and thus forced to watch them play from the sidelines. When he finally thinks the chance has come, little boy is shocked to learn otherwise. With anger, he throws away the ball and goes off betrayed, dejected and waits for the moment to showcase his best.
In a world of decency, the concept of a decent rapper is the trend and 1Der-JR plays that to perfection. No images of money being splashed, girls dancing dirty or drugs and swanky rides.
In the world of locations, Tebatusobola moves from dingy buildings littered with writings, dusty playfields, to scenes in a bachelor pad and a basement workshop of sorts. The video makes a combination of all these locations, each to communicate the same message while reaching out to different audiences. Thus, the video locations are something every viewer can identify with as different aspects or stages of their lives.
This video should only be faulted on the front of keeping the arm-swinging crew of Salim Segawa and others in the background. They could have done better with extreme close-up shots.
