. This album was one of the first to peel back the foundation of rap, exposing the real meaning of the rapping, to tell it how it is. Biggie rapped to give people a chance to see into his world, to feel his pain. This was a new concept, the lyrics were the focus of the song, not the beat, not the popularity. Biggie brought his reality to light. In the song “N***as Bleed” Biggie rhymes, Peeps in ninety-one, stole a gun from my workers And they took drugs, they tried to jerk us These lines proves Biggie didn’t care what people thought about him. His crew was robbed selling drugs on the street, some may see him as weak for that. Biggie wasn’t embarrassed about it, he wanted to tell the world about his struggles. Telling the strait truth is something …show more content…
Biggie embodied the image of a rapper. Growing up in Brooklyn, poor, and surrounded by violence, the odds seemed stacked against him. By using the power of music and shear talent, he boosted himself up to be an A list celebrity. Biggie created a new basis for artists joining the rap game. To be successful in this industry, you had to have credentials. Biggie invented this new standard. No rappers music could be trusted or enjoyed, unless it was backed up by a past involving violence, drugs, or hardship. In rap music, your image is sometimes just as important as your lyrics. You can’t rap about the ghetto without any experience of living there. People don’t just want to listen to rap music, they want to experience it. You can’t get the same feeling through rap music, if the artist doesn’t embody what is being rapped about. You wouldn’t trust a doctor to perform surgery if they had never gone to medical school. We wouldn’t appreciate Biggie rapping about the ten crack commandments, if he hadn’t been an actual drug dealer. Biggie started to make rappers take responsibilities for their music, from then on, rappers had to have the right credentials to be trusted. It seemed after
I was so interested in the truth that I suspended my assumptions about West as I pursued more information through research, giving me an objective lens. It truly rattled me to have been so wrong in my assumptions, it felt weird to know that because of something I didn’t know, I had believed something. It genuinely shook my self-confidence. I really prided myself on my knowledge of Hip-Hop, I thought I knew all the classic albums, how could I have overlooked this one for so long? So, jolted by this sting of self embarrassment, I searched further, I wanted to know what else I had been oblivious to. It became increasingly clearer to me that there were two completely opposite views about Kanye, the more popular view: he’s a worthless egotistical pop star, who’s created nothing of value, and, as I was shocked to learn over time, the informed view, and the truth, that he was and is one the most influential artists of the 21’st
In bradley’s story he discusses how taking the time to view the MC’s lyrics and transcribing them for yourself is most beneficial in getting a better understanding of the song. In some songs this evidence can hold true but in most songs, this is dependent on the performance and narrative told by the MC. The art of storytelling is what i hold true to being what makes a rapper good. Stated in a blog post by a student “Mostly rap music is a means of expression. It is music of the street. In their lyrics rappers express their fears for their community, the reality of their lives, and they describe both the positive and negative sides of everyday life.”
The album was created in less than a year. They gained inspiration from the music of many rock bands, such as Kerry King from Slayer. While listening to the album, the lyrics are mostly about women, drugs, rebelling against parents and partying. The sound of the album from song to song is very different, yet each song has a similar base cord. Each song in the album has a consistent beat while they rap, with small bursts of sound that transitions the lyrics to a faster or slower pace.... ...
I say this because it better informed me on issues that I have known were present in the hip hop/rap culture. One of the main points in the film was the manhood in hip-hop culture. Before I dig into this topic one thing to understand is that hip-hop was created in the slums of New York. People grew up in very tough times; poverty was the norm, violence was high, and drugs influenced people’s lives. As you watch the film you can clearly see that all of the artists portray a tough “don’t mess with me” image. When asked why Hip-Hop promotes these images artists responded almost unanimously. They said that when you grow up in tough conditions you can’t be a punk. People see anything that’s not toughness weak. Anybody who isn’t perceived as tough is looked at like a bitch. Another big topic in the film was the way hip-hop victimizes women, and African American women in particular. The culture of Hip-Hop reduces women to sex objects. They’re half naked or more in the music videos and dancing explicitly. An issue in the film was when popular rapper Nelly swiped his credit card down a woman’s butt cheeks in a music video. This lead Nelly to cancel a bone marrow donation event at Spellman College after students said they were going to protest. Another issue in the film was homophobia. When a rapper named of Busta Rhymes was asked about homophobia he didn’t even respond to the question he completely walked off set. That
On a lighter note, he explains his inspirations for his dream of making music in the song ‘Juicy.’ Biggie’s writing went in depth to show his audience where he came from and to also inspire other artists working their way up in the music industry. Lastly, Kendrick Lamar’s piece Good Kid m.A.A.d City is a coming of age story from the perspective of teenage Kendrick living in Compton, California. This album shows the dark side of Kendrick’s life, as well as his lighter moments of aspiration. There are vivid depictions of violence that he endured as a teen, as well as the influence of money and power.
“Damn right I love the life I live, cause I went from negative, to positive.” This is one of the most well-known quotes stated by The Notorious B.I.G. He was an extremely talented rapper and person. Christopher Wallace, AKA Biggie Smalls was one of the most respected and successful artists worldwide. Though his career was short, it was extremely successful.
First of all he calls the woman in the song, a bitch. It starts off with a skit and in this skit with the few lines it contains, the woman is completely disrespected because she does not provide the answer that was he wanted to hear. The script is “Yo let—let—let me ask you a question yo / Yo, would you kill for me? / Hmmm... yeah / What took you so long to answer motherfucker? / I don't know / The fuck wrong with you bitch?” he later on raps “And I admit, when the time is right, the wine is right / I treat you right, you talk slick, I beat you right / Just me and my bitch, me and my bitch.” Biggie says he beats his partner anytime she says something he does not like which promotes physical and emotional abuse to the people that listen to his music. People will think there is no problem with putting there hands on their partner cause Bigge does it. Biggie sends out the wrong type of message to people about how they should treat their partner in a
To say it lightly, Stanley Crouch does not like the hip-hop genre of music. The dreadlocks, the clothing style, and the "vulgar": gold chains are just a few things he does not approve of at all. (Crouch, 1 ) It astounds him to see how far African-American music has fallen since the days of the Motown. Stanley was quoted as saying this about rap, "It is rudeness, vulgarity, and pornography disguised as ‘keeping it real.'" (Crouch, 1) He also went on to say the hip-hop music genre has the worst impact of all music genres on our culture today. (Crouch, 2) Crouch believes one does not need much talent to become a successful rapper unlike the jazz greats he listens to all the time.
There is a misconception regarding rap music content about how it predominantly focuses on the topics of drugs, sex and money. Various people do not understand that rap music is a valuable method of expressing one’s emotions and thoughts. The lyrics in rap music are able to strongly represent a broader story of someone’s story. Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise is a story of what it was like as an African-American male to grow up in the ghettos. Through his lyrics, Coolio explains the real-life problems of living in Compton, his hometown. His music describes how immense the amount violence inner city violence that occurred and what he had to become in order to fit into that society. The point of this song was to show those who had not experienced what he had gone through some insight. Coolio mentions how his deviant actions have affected his relationship with his mother. He attempts to justify that murder and violence were the only way to survive on the streets he lived in. The song devises numerous associations to the situation of class, socialization and the conflict subculture. In his
On the article “On a Date Rape” by Camille Paglia, creates a controversy discussion about how women have reached freedom throughout the years and blames young feminist for being “over privileged”. Her belief is that women in general misuse the social freedom she so virtuously fought for. She also mentioned that her generation was aware of the risk that they were taking, while today’s generation does not. However, she blames any young lady who finds herself into a perilous situation for the tragedy that follows; moreover, Paglia’s article is unreliable due to the abuse of several fallacies such as hasty generalization, false analogy, false cause, poising well, false dilemma, slippery slope, as well as straw men.
The following morning is a dreadful, long one that stays with you forever. The memories in your mind keep crawling up every night when you fall asleep. You keep asking yourself, “Why did it happen to me? What did I do wrong?” Yet no answer comes to mind, all that you can think of is being violated, being misled for a simple task-rape. Why does it happen to us? What do the men see when the door is opened and a gorgeous women stands in front of their eyes. The mind collapses trying to find a solution to the problem. It's like having an exam and the only way for you to score is to cheat. So all girls are just scores guys try to push themselves upon? The mind grows blank and the human body works with sexual instinct. Date rape is one of those things that one man can't find a proper answer for. There are so many possibilities that one might think of as the cause of the problem. Which one is the right one? Is there one specific answer that is physiologically correct? No. Everyone has his or her own opinion, whether it is from experience or from common knowledge. Date rape is mainly cased by the in-proper behavior of the rapist. A man who can rape a woman has obviously been brought up in an uncomfortable, improper raised environment.
Rap is about giving voice to a black community otherwise underrepresented, if not silent, in the mass media. It has always been and remains … directly connected to the streets from which it came. (144)
The quote " .. hip-hop is successful because the music is “infectious” and because it allows people to express themselves.."(Walker). From this quote we can analyze it and say that the rap is an art form that allows oneself to express their feeling about the world or express their own feelings, etc. We can than connect the film to this quote to the film Notorious, for example the rivalry between Biggie Smalls and Tupac. We notice that they use rap in order to express how they feel about each through a rap battle, and from the quote by the author Carolee Walker, these two rappers use their rapping skills to show how they feel towards one another. This theme reoccurs throughout every rappers career, whether its dissing one another through a song or its expressing how they feel about a certain someone
In the eyes of the general public, all of Hip-Hop is usually categorized in the same way. Labeled as the poison of the Black community because nowadays, most Hip-Hop lyrics all sound the same generic way always talking about money, women, cars, drugs, or some type of beef that all these rappers sooner or later continuously have with one another. But what this new generation doesn’t know about are the positive and creative flows that were spit not so long ago in the 80’s and 90’s. Rappers back in the day like Tupac and Ice Cube both had times when they had to show off their thug sides but they both had reasons or a call-to-arms for that, and indeed were in tune with that era’s problems as well as the society where they were raised. Moreover, even though some new school songs actually look promising, old school songs are still always great classics that anybody in this day and age will most certainly vibe to.