Brian Williams
Professor LaVette Burnette
HUMN 4482
10-5-16
Response #5
The reading I decided to respond to was about Lupe Fiasco’s song “bad bitch”. It was a very controversial song to many. In this song, Lupe talks about the effect of certain words on our youth. In the hip hop world, the word is used negatively and as a term of endearment to many. When a woman refers to herself as a bad bitch, it makes her seem dominant and independent. In the first verse, he showcases a young boy hearing his mother refer to herself as a bad bitch. She is reciting the lyrics from her radio. Children listen to everything, so this could possibly have a negative outcome. Due to this experience, he may develop a belief that this word is positive and should be
Everybody’s buying Fall Out Boy’s new album, American Beauty/American Pyscho. The Fall Out Boy boy band recently became very popular throughout America in 2014 when their song Centuries, started to hit the number 1 music charts. Originally a fairly popular band throughout the Alternative music industry, they quickly accumulated the attention of music listeners all around the world. The boys also began collaborating with singers like Wiz Khalifa and bands like Paramore or Panic!
In rap music, rappers minimize women to “ass and tits” and “bitches and hos”. She goes on to say how black-on-black love is decreasing while black-on-black crimes are starting to increase. Rappers affect the meaning of true black love. The reason they call women names is because they don’t love themselves and are unable to love others. Rap also promotes drugs, murder, and gangs.
(Walser, 157). The issue with this one is that the artists would use the slang in their music, but the fact that it was used a lot in the black population and the fact that they used to replace words made it frowned upon.
Nas uses both words to empower people to show them men and women aren’t always the people they say they are. He is degrading those words because he using them to describe people who are fake and not true/loyal. “Bitches left me cause they thought I was finished, Should of knew she wasn't true she came to me when her man caught a sentence, Diamonds are blinding, I never make the same mistakes.” This piece of his song reminds me of a quote Andi Zeisler uses in her story The B Word, “Bitch is a word we use to describe any woman who is strong, angry, uncompromising, and often uninterested in pleasing men. We use the term for a woman on the street who doesn’t respond to men’s catcalls.”
Blond is meant to be intricate, encompassing and exploring many themes from a micro and macro perspective, but the final result is shoddy: overwhelming in duration, insipid in impact. Impactful records aren 't made with the intent of being so; they 're just made as a result of experience and brilliance. Among other reasons, it 's hard to take Ocean 's overbearing, unctuous lyrics and tone serious when you can 't fully make out what he 's trying to say (both in meaning and in enunciation). In the words of Erykah Badu, "What good do your words do, if they don 't understand you?" Even after hearing it a few times, you don 't walk away feeling a change or like anything was actually discussed because he never takes a definitive stance.
Some people make their song or any writing effective by using dictation or foul language. In the song “Hold up”, Beyoncé uses foul language to appeal to pathos/anger by saying, "I'm gonna f*** me up a b****", while holding a bat. In the song “Don’t hurt yourself” ft. Jack White, Beyoncé uses foul language to appeal to pathos/anger by saying, “Who the f*** do you think I am? You ain’t married to no average b****, boy, You can watch my fat a** twist, boy, as I bounce to the next d*** boy”. This appeal to pathos because she’s telling her man that if he keeps messing up, he can easily be replaced and this is similar to the message in her single
Heartbreak Hotel is a song that was recorded by Elvis Presley and was written by a high school teacher named Mae Axton and a steel guitar player named Tommy Durden. It was recorded and released in January 1956 by RCA Studios. Elvis was only 21 and Heartbreak Hotel was his first song with the new record label RCA in Nashville, Tennessee. He recorded the song with his band the Blue moon boys. It was his first million-seller and the bestselling single of 1956.
In a society where songs with meaningless lyrics and repeated phrases gathers the most publicity, it is surprising to find songs that exhibit meaningful lyrics and thoughts. Unlike most hip-hop songs that contain useless repeated lyrics, Kanye West’s 2008 hit “Heartless” contains lyrics full of meaning. After producing this song, he was starting to approach the zenith of his career. This song became an instant hit for not only its soothing beats or sounds, but for its impactful lyrics that take the listener multiple attempts to really understand. This song tells the story of a tragic breakup between two individuals that cannot seem to get along.
In her essay “hip hop’s betrayal of black women,” Jennifer McLune implies that “(h)ip-hop owes its success to the ideology of women-hating” (193). She does not agree with Kevin Powell’s article that hip-hop does not mean to “offend” black women, but instead artists are only letting out their temper throughout their music. McLune feels infuriated that many artists in hip hop (including black men) rap about their community and downgrade their own women. In the hip-hop genre, sexism is mainly used, not only by black men but also by many other race hip-hop artists. Artists assume that women-hating in their rap songs will be accepted by women, but do not realize that it is affecting all women.
Jay MacLeod’s book Ain’t No Making’ It is a treatise on social reproduction theory, that is, the ways in which class inequality is reproduced across generations, and is equally relevant and informative to understanding the cycle of poverty today as it was in 1987 when it was first published. The explanations of the life trajectories of the men studied in this book are especially important in light of the inflamed rhetoric and intense debate that characterize the interactions between the two distinct ideologies that have bifurcated the theorists of educational reform: Economically deterministic theories and the theories emphising the autonomy of the cultural level. Though the attempt of the author is to provide a perspective which allows for the simultaneous existence of the two theories. We will see that neither perspective can be said to be entirely endorsed by the conclusions found in Ain’t No Makin’ It.
Hip-hop is an influential form of music that displays an artist’s honest and revealing story that many of the general public can relate to. One of the many songs that I can relate to is “Love Yourz” written by J Cole. The song talks about how Cole reflects on the most important things in life such as love and happiness. He realizes that the money and fame didn’t bring him the happiness he desired. To gain true happiness, he needed to appreciate himself and those that love him.
“He insists that he began writing the album not as Bush-bashing or with the intent to preach. He wrote the songs as both a "purging" and as a way to understand what was happening as events spiralled out of control” (Colapinto, 2005). One day he was driving to his studio and a song came on about loving to be a red neck. When he heard this he realized that he was angry about those lyrics because it was everything that he was against. He already knew that the music industry was very politically correct but he just needed to come out of the box he was out into so he could express himself the way he wanted.
Tupac Shakur "Changes" Alexis S Whaley Keiser University Tupac Shakur was more than just an artist, rapper, or thug, he was a poet who inspired many young people of his time to take a stand. He used music as a tool to educate and speak awareness to low-income poverty-stricken neighborhoods. His words are still very influential and inspiring to many young and elderly people not just in America but throughout the world. Tupac 's song "Changes" is one of his most popular songs speaks very deep of racism and poverty in America. He starts the song tackling African American social issues.
Song: Title: Love the way you lie Singer: Eminem ft Rihanna What is the song about? “Love the Way you Lie” is about a couple who has an abusive relationship and some of the situations they experience. The lyrics, “Love the Way you Lie ” suggests that the woman wants to leave but for some reason cannot so she just “deals” with it.
Heartbreaks and relationships that you cannot seem to let go of, has been singing and expressed musically for generations. The sorrow-filled and teary-eyed music has become such a typical type of music in America, that it even has its own genre in your music playlist. But here, Erykah Badu adds her emotions to the exceedingly large group of heartbreak songs with this remarkable record. Pouring her soul out onto each line, releasing emotions with every high note is what Ms. Badu is well-known for. From her second album, Mama's Gun, Badu gives her spirit and soul in the Green Eyes track.