J Coles Be Free Essay

The reason I chose to do this song is because I feel J.Cole is one of the most underrated artists of our generation and is never given enough credit for his musical talent. I also consider J.Cole the voice of our generation and a voice for the unspoken, he also chooses to stand for greater good and what he believes in. I feel Cole also takes a different approach to get in touch with his listeners. He’s also chosen to be a voice of the people who might be scared to speak their minds.

Music is a creative art form that allows the artist to construct something that expresses a purpose. It evolves over time and changes as the world changes, taking on many different motivations behind the melody and lyrics. In today’s society, anger, oppression, racism, and negative opinions rule the media and popular culture. I believe that African Americans need to show their self worth and not let white people hold them back. With the music in white culture often mocking African American culture and portraying negative stereotypes, African Americans have to find ways to gain respect. In acknowledgement of the negative portrayal of their culture, African Americans respond by creating songs and videos that express their pride in their culture and heritage, react to white oppression, and communicate their independence.

Millions of people in the world listen to music for all different reasons. Most people all over the world listen to different genres of music in order to relax, but not too many people pay attention to the actual lyrics of a song. If you listen to the lyrics of a song you will realize that many songs have important messages or themes to them. An example of this is the lyrics of the song “Changes” by Tupac Shakur. If you listen to this song, you will realize that Tupac raps about not only the problems that African Americans face from society, but also the struggles that poor people in society have to endure and overcome. Many

McBride uses emotional, logical, and ethical appeals to drive his point. His use of emotional appeals are used to get attention and provoke thought from people who may have similar backgrounds to his, or those who may have a strong opinion towards hip hop culture. An example of this would be “hip hop remains an enigma, a clarion call, a cry of ‘I am’ from the youth of the world” (McBride 1). A clarion call is a strongly expressed demand or request for action- a plea, essentially. This pairs with the word “cry” to create a sense of despair in the youth of the world. By grabbing the reader’s heart as well as their attention, this moves the reader to consider the music as more than just defiance.

Beyoncé Knowles, a well-known singer, songwriter uses two of her songs: “Freedom” and “Formation” to tell the story of herself. “Freedom” is the beginning of her story where she is searching for freedom and equality showing that there is still much inequality and injustice for African Americans in America today. The song slowly transitions to a more positive tone when she seems to have made something beneficial out of her difficult situation. “Formation,” however, has a completely different tone. While she does address negative situations from the past at the beginning of the song, she quickly transitions to a more positive tone full of pride in where she came from, who she has become, and what she has overcome. Together, the two songs

According to Gates, "Watts brought the economic nature of oppression to the nation's attention [and marked] the beginning of the end of the civil rights movement and the birth of a more subtle and nuanced and complex kind of analysis (Mozingo & Jennings, 2015)." Poverty and racism caused the people of Watts to riot against powerlessness. The Watts Riots erupted on August 11, 1965 when law enforcement arrested a black youth on drunk driving charges. Onlookers intervened and mobbed Watts for 6 days looting and destroying the city. The riot resulted in 34 people dead, 1,000 injured and more than 200 buildings

The Watts riots began in the summer of 1965, in a city in Los Angeles called Watts. It all began with the arrest of a young African American by a white California Highway Patrol officer. Now, it was not because he was arrested for already doing something illegal, it was for the way the police officer treated the individual. According to Lacine Holland, an eyewitness to the arrest, the officer “took him and threw him in the car like a bag of laundry and kicked his feet in and slammed the door.” (Flournoy) This caused lots of unrest among the fellow residents of Watts. This was just the beginning of years of pent up oppression for the minorities, which participated in the event. Similarly, in 1992, the Rodney King riots also arose due to the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers for their brutal beating

In this article, the speaker must be an expert in politics, ethnicity and the music industry. There is a linkage between the above fields hence the speaker must have had a superlative background on these issues. The audience targeted by this literature were seemingly music enthusiasts to be educated on understanding what Hip-Hop entails and hoped to achieve this as it was established. The subject was Hip-Hop as a music genre that was largely developed by African American men to express their plight on injustice and oppression. The principal issue was how Hip-Hop has been used as a form of resistance and need for deliverance of the African Americans.

Through songs many people express their feelings of the world threw the words they have wrote. Many songs talk about civil rights of the people and how change should be an option. In the world we live in today we have social issues that people have to face such as: police brutality, racial profiling, discrimination etc. Through Kendrick Lamar, Public Enemy, The Game, Bebe Winans, and N.W.A they will use their voice as a weapon for change among all people. Music with a message thrives in a live setting, for obvious reasons, and many politically conscious musicians aim to channel the heightened emotions

In 1965 riots in L.A. occurred after a routine stop by the police involving drunk driving. This stop occurred very close the driver’s residence where massive crowd began to build. When it was all said and done

Going to the second Watts Riot or Rebellion I found that the people that were talking to us about the Watts Rebellion where people that were directly affected by it. A Gentlemen named Guilion who was born in Miami, Florida moved his business from Miami to Carson California about 3 miles away from Cal State University Dominguez Hills. He was an older gentlemen probably in his late 70s early 80s and he said he remembers the day the Riots began. He said he was sitting in his store which was a shoe store he wouldn't give the name of the store but he said it was on the news and he encouraged us to look it up he said he is pretty sure it was on the internet, but he said the watts rebellion ruined his business for a great deal of time. He said

Many artists explain social protest throughout their own music and explains how they feel about it. Domani Harris explains his side of the story throughout his song “Black Lives Matter”. Harris song, “Black Lives Matter” Harris explains

In this song we are now observing very recent history and the beginning of the black lives matter movement in response to the highly publicized cases of police brutality against African Americans. This song has a strong message for its listeners that brings up the mentality of African American’s in the modern era in the face of continuing systematic racism. It has been 150 years since the abolishment of slavery and 50 years after the civil rights legislature, but the societal issue of racism is still very relevant. In the chorus of this song J. Cole sings about wanting to be free and breaking the chains off. This has strong imagery in the historical context of racism.

Artists like Bruno Mars, John Legend, and Alicia Keys have reflected that in their recent music by using the same melodies that were used by the slaves and civil rights activists calling for young African Americans to follow in the footsteps of those like Martin Luther King Jr. and search for the “liberty for all” that is spoken of in the Pledge of

Sometimes referred to as militant songs, the freedom songs were seen as songs that set the record straight, and most preeminently voiced the distress that the African Americans felt. These “spirituals, while based upon freedom themes, were not extrinsically militant; they were songs of protest, in acceptable and thinly veiled form against the condition of life.” These songs are among those introduced into the worship service at my church. However, we are careful to remember that “the meaning of music resides in people, not in sounds.”