Star Image - How it changes

The artist I've studied in star image is 'Chip' formerly known as 'Chipmunk'. This artist entered the music industry and the public eye at a very young age, in turn his innocence and age was emphasised in these early stages.



This video is in 2009, in this video the star is only 17 years of age and therefore the focus of his image was to do with his age as the video takes part in a school. The emphasis of his age amplifies his abilities as an artist as he is very young to be performing on the scale that he is. He wears uniform for the majority of this video promoting his innocence and youth. There are no profanities within this video and his image was very clean cut in order for him to appeal to the mass market which he did and managed to chart a few times and sell many records.



Here is another display of him exploiting a very clean cut image. its all very professional, they are smartly dressed to match the old school feel to the chorus (which may be a sample but i am unsure). At this point in the artist's career he was very young and it was appropriate for his image to remain free of swearing, drinking and the over objectifying of women in order for him to sustain his position as a successful mainstream or overground artist but in the space of 3 or so years this changed dramatically. Not only did the way he dresses change, the style of music he makes changed and he even changed his name from 'Chipmunk' to 'Chip' a shortening of that same name. This particular artist had received a lot of negative publicity from his underground viewers through his success in the mass market and he then decided after being successful that he no longer needed to make clean music that wasn't his favourite style or did he need to dress smart and his image became much more street. He left the major label he was signed to, changed his name and his image is now at 21 years of age is very different to what it was at the young age of 17.



He now makes video like this in which he wears gold chains, all black clothes and a crowd of people dressed likewise. He has tattoos all over his arms and his lyrical content has changed dramatically. He now talks about drinking, drugs and graphic descriptions of women being sexually objectified. He condones his associates or friends drug dealing and other criminal activities, all these things he would not have done if still carrying his previous image.