Runaway Love Analysis

The song I chose is Runaway Love by Ludacris featuring Mary J. Blige. The song was released in 2007 on Ludacris’s fifth album Release Therapy. The style or genre is rhythm and blues and rap. The song is very soulful and emotional. Ludacris is the main voice in the song and raps all of the verses telling a story, however Mary J. Blige is the emotion behind the lyrics and she sings the chorus. The mood of the song is sad and emotional. There is a rhythm though if beats that draws the listener in. The beat is made by a clapping noise and makes the listener want to clap along to the beat. The songs tempo is not too fast or too slow. It's slow enough to be soulful but it's still fast enough to rap to and has a beat. The instruments in this song are the guitar, base, and keyboard, along with background vocals.

I think this song would be an effective tool for my social justice movement because of its literal meaning and lyrics.

In the song Runaway Love, Ludacris raps about three young girls, Lisa, Nicole, and Erica, who are in abusive situations. My social justice movement is all about domestic abuse and abusive relationships. This song shows that anyone can be abused because he girls are all different ages, 9,10, and 11. The three girls are also in different situations but they all share a common theme of being abused in some way. The first girl Lisa is neglected by her mother and molested by a man her mother brings home. The next girl Nicole, is beaten by her alcoholic step father. Nicole also struggles with low self confidence and this relates to topics I want to cover in my social justice movement. The last girl Erica is abused by her older boyfriend and then left alone. The title Runaway Love is about all of these girls running away from their abusive situations and getting away from

everything.
In the song the chorus Mary J. Bilge sings is very emotional and powerful. She speaks directly at th girls at times saying, “keep on runnin’” and “I’ll run away with you”. This sends an important powerful message that could be used in my social justice movement. That people suffering in abusive situations are not alone and there are ways out. At the very end Ludacris does not rap he speaks softly. He says, “Close your eyes and picture us running away together and when we come back everything is going to be okay. Open your eyes”. It's speakly directly to victims or people who have been in similar situations. This part of the song can be taken literally in my social justice movement people can close their eyes and vision themselves in a better place. Also the songs clapping sounding beat I mentioned earlier can unite people and start them clapping too. It will bring people together because everyone can be effected by abuses at sometime in their life.