Rhetorical Analysis Of The Rap

Characterizations of the rap genre in the twenty-first century conjure up two diverging lines of thought. Some critics argue that hip-hop is rapidly degrading as mainstream audiences demand superficial songs about drugs and sex. Meanwhile, proponents point out a rise in postmodern thought, with commentary on moral relativism offering layered meanings to a genre of musical resistance that carries on the legacy of defeating lasting sentiments from slavery and colonialism. Two self-proclaimed kings of the rap game, Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar, offer their personal thoughts on the duality of the rap game as well as the duality with human nature, including battles in black culture as well as battles with themselves, in their music videos Jesus

This primarily comes to light through West’s choice to interweave multiple narratives throughout the music video. Using color to differentiate between the various vignettes, viewers first see the white sergeant with the black chain-gang, and then proceed to watch the interweaving stories of a couple smuggling cocaine, a Ku Klux Klan member making a cross, and a group of girls living in a welfare home to convey Kanye conveys his message of minority oppression. All frowned upon archetypes in society from prisoners and drug dealers to a racist, and welfare dependents, Kanye’s video goes through the effort of depicting them and letting them sing different parts of the song. For example, in verse two, as Kanye enters into a spoken word section to assert “to the victims of welfare for we living in hell here,” one of the girls from the welfare vignette answers with a poignant “hell yeah.” Additionally, when Kanye raps the line “We eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast.” From the perspective of a police officer, a prisoner answers “Huh? Y’all eat pieces of shit?” Yet another example of this technique takes place during the hook when the woman in the drug dealer vignette, about to be pulled over by police officers, enters a state of praying and sings the title lyrics “Jesus walk.” The combination of these separate pieces offer a poignant stance from West that he references in his lyric “To the hustlers, killers, murderers, drug dealers, even the scrippers, Jesus walks with them.” In other words, the self-proclaimed Yeezus is playing Jesus and standing up for the misfits of the world by metaphorically giving them a voice through his song, and physically doing so in his music video. Rather then demean these groups, West seems to assert that the cycle of subordination((())) needs to be broken. In order to do this, media must give voices to minority groups they