Your Love’ was Nicki Minaj’s second solo video. It was written by Minaj with Joseph Hughes, David Freedman, and Andrew "Pop" Wansel.The song serves as the first single from her debut studio album, Pink Friday. Minaj was preparing to release another single after the intended lead single from the album, "Massive Attack, which failed to make a worldwide. A version of "Your Love" appeared on the Barbie World mix tape in January 2010, another version appeared online after it was stolen and leaked. After the song was endorsed by radio, the song was mixed and a few lyrics were changes before it was made the new single from the album, first released on June 1, 2010."Your Love" samples the pop song "No More I Love You's" (1994) by Scottish recording artist Annie Lennox, with additional bass, hip-hop backbeats and drum loops. Described as a "rap-ballad", the song is a change of tempo compared to Minaj's previous work; the song contains a "new brand of hood majesty in that Nicki establishes herself as a sexy, confident woman from the ‘hood’. The video also highlights her musical talent as it shows her singing and rapping flexibility. Nicki became the first female artist to lead the chart since 2003 . Additionally, the song charted at number twenty-two on the US Pop Songs chart. The song also appeared on other charts worldwide, notably reaching number forty-three in Canada, and number twelve on the UK R&B Chart. The music video again was distributed digitally on television music channels such as MTV and KISS which attracts and appeals to a worldwide mainstream audience. The song's music video was directed by Lil X, and American actor Michael Jai White, who portrays Minaj's love interest. The storyline revolves around a love story in which Minaj is a samurai-in-training who falls for her martial arts teacher, and duels for his affection with a jealous classmate. The video therefore is considered to be narrative based. The video pays homage to films Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Kill Bill (2003) as it uses the concept of martial arts. In comparison to her first video Massive Attack, Nicki is portrayed as a young, innocent looking love struck young women, which shows a different side of her personality. Young female audiences can relate to the video as it explores the theme of love. The video in itself is very simplistic as it uses basic conventional concepts and themes whereas Massive Attack used a range of concepts and themes. The simplicity of the video adds to the ‘innocentness’ Nicki is trying to convey. The outfits and costumes Nicki wears in this video are completely different to what she wore in Massive Attack for example Nicki wears a Martial Arts costume when she is training and a long black robe when she is dueling with her opponent. These outfits show less of her flesh which presents her in this video to be quite down to earth and less promiscuous as opposed to Massive Attack where she is portrayed as bold, eccentric and promiscuous. However on the other hand during the scenes whilst she is singing Nicki wears a leotard with a suit jacket. On one hand she is trying to look sophisticated whereas on the other hand she still creates sex appeal as her legs and bum are emphasised. Therefore whilst this video connotes innocence it still attracts the male gaze as Nicki is dressed seductively. From this video the audiences are able to see the transition from her first solo video. Massive Attack and Your Love highlight Nicki’s personality and creativity in that she creates bold themes for her video whilst reflecting her personality and establishing herself as an artist.
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