Song Analysis: Hip-Hop Is The Streets

“Hip-hop is the streets. Hip-hop is a couple of elements that it comes from back in the days... that feel of music with urgency that speaks to you. It speaks to your livelihood and it 's not compromised. It 's blunt. It 's raw, straight off the street - from the beat to the voice to the words (Nas, IMDB).” Rapper Nas once said this when describing hip-hop. When some people think of the Hip-Hop they think of gangsters, violence and other negative things, this is often because like Nas said, it is raw and straight from the streets and sometimes what these rappers are saying is hard to understand. That there are certain Hip-Hop songs that are strongly influenced by those things there is a plethora of Hip-Hop songs that are used to tell life

In this verse there is a drastic change in the narrative voice ,here J.Cole demands the attention of the listener by saying “Listen up.” He then proceeds to tell his story of how he 's going to get rich which is a very different story from the first verse. In this verse, he tells a story of getting rich through hitting a lick which means robbing someone, J.Cole then proceeds to tell the listener how he will also get rich through selling drugs when he says “ And some powder, bag it up and make it flip.” A Tale of 2 Citiez is an example of J.Cole telling two stories both about having a lot of money. The only difference is that in the first half he is telling the story through the lense of a child already living in Forest Hill while in the second verse, the story is told through the lense of someone stuck in the inner city. Tale of 2 Citiez is essentially J.Cole telling his own life story as he grew up in the inner city and was exposed to all the negativity the drugs and violence and how now he finds himself living in Forest Hill Drive. In the first verse of the song,he is telling the story of what he thought it would be like as a child to live in Forest Hill in comparison to