This illustrates a problematic aspect of the African American community. Material identity has become a prevalent aspect surrounding the hip-hop community. Material is illustrated most often through the type of car a person drives and the accessories that they put on it. It is also illustrated through clothes and jewelry. This bar judged men that Winter would consider dating. Souljah uses Winter’s love of material possessions to illustrate what becomes the downfall of many people in the African America community.
Today many people feel compelled to buy anything or everything with an expensive price tag. This includes Expensive designer clothes, latest gadgets, expensive vehicles and many other similar things. This form of consumerism has embedded itself in today’s society; where it's encouraged to invest in such materialistic possessions. Kanye West is an African-American rapper, producer, and entrepreneur, who articulates his struggle with consumerism and the struggle for those around him in his song “All Falls Down.” West, utilizes puns, rhyme, and juxtaposition to highlight the issues surrounding materialism that can be interpreted differently by different listeners such as African Americans and White Americans.
In Stephen Dobyns’s “Loud Music,” the speaker describes the differences between him and his step-daughter’s thoughts on loud music, which shows that music really describes a person’s personality. Throughout the poem the speaker explains how his step-daughter likes soft and more meaningful music more than loud music and their different music types shows in their difference in personalities and the way they see things. People all over the world let the music they listen to describe their personalities.
Throughout Kanye West’s prolific career, he has possessed an intricate sound that has separated him from his hip-hop counterparts. After the immense praise he received on his breakout album, College Dropout, it was no surprise that Kanye West would perform at the same level on his second album, Late Registration. West presented an innovative and soulful sound to the hip-hop industry, earning individuals’ ears and hearts.With lyrics that discussed themes of poverty, drug abuse, and domestic issues and samples that provided a sense of nostalgia, Kanye West was steadily transforming into a political icon far beyond the means of his hip-hop artistry. With such empowering and sincere lyrics, Kanye West served as the voice of historically marginalized people, whose voices were seemingly unheard before. In the song “Drive Slow,” West’s guidance and empowering message remained evident, as he joined forces with GLC and Paul Wall to create a soulful song that offered assistance on how to overcome barriers in life. Through the use of suggestive details, figurative language, and vivid storytelling, West utilizes the automobile culture to assert how individuals can achieve success of every field of human endeavor through constant efforts in the right direction. In addition, he also attempts to convey that one must “drive slow” in a car in order to appreciate the environment that consists outside of the automobile. West creates a double entendre of the word “drive slow,” expressing that
The Importance of Music in Cannery Row The novel is able to share how music is of great importance and is able to affect people’s moods and thoughts.
Being wealthy is everyone’s goal. This song has many poetic devices, and is a song that is perceived differently depending on what you believe, and how you feel about the words and the meaning they convey; the song can be said to be about a woman and her beliefs changing, or about a woman who takes everything she wants in life, and gives nothing back in return. The poetic devices used within the song help create emotion, imager, and tell a story.
African American Music: Over the years, African American Music has developed as not only as cultural but also artistic phenomenon affecting the world. The music takes its own stand of being dominant as well of having a prevailing means of expression through the use of the lyrics. The lyrics of many songs tend to use a specific type of language in order to create that connection between the listeners. This certain style of language helps the listeners to think on a deeper level about the real meaning behind the lyrics.
This song implies that individual’s are violating the norms and values of society. They start the song with a verse that expresses
Often music is consisted not only by sounds made from musical instruments, but also by voice and verbal messages. The structure of the voice, or as Roland Barthes describes it ‘the grain of voice’ is the element in a certain piece of music which is responsible for creating the emotions when listening. The grain and the lyrics make the signified and carry out the message. The vocal part of music is formed of words, text, which communicate and make the representation and expression of what it is sung - talked about. According to Barthes the emotive modes of the voice and the changes of the tones from low to high is what delivers the final message and makes us feel the music. (Barthes, R. 1977 [1972]).
The paper will focus on comparing two different songs by discussing their context and highlighting the similarities and differences between both chosen songs. The comparison will be based on the background information for each song as well as peripheral information about the albums. The comparison will also include any contextual similarities and differences between the songs. The two chosen songs for the comparison are: 'Woodstock' by Joni Mitchell and 'The Times They Are a-Changin' by Bob Dylan.
Viterbo University Today’s society is filled with the fast paced individuals, working to get their materialistic high-end cell-phones, big cars and trucks, and even bigger houses. It seems like you have to have stuff to “be somebody”. It is not about the little things anymore; kindness, appreciation, thoughtful deeds. People are judged by what they have, who they know, and how much money they make. It reminds me of the song by Kristen Bush entitled Trailer Hitch. In this song he sings about living a simpler life, not knowing why everyone wants all the expensive things. He sings about giving away his things and feeling good for doing it, realizing that you can’t take them with you when you go as “You never seen a hearse with a trailer hitch”. Makes one think about how you live your life, and that materialistic possessions do not really matter.
Furthermore, we stress about how we are going to pay mortgage or a car note, making the big corporations richer. Our priorities in life aren’t about finding ourselves or becoming better people. In her chorus throughout the song, she pleads for the audience to forget about the price tag, just let go of money problems. People don’t realize we wear down our bodies working hard to get ahead, when ultimately we are just staying middle class and helping “the big guys” get ahead. Our main goal in life is to get the highest on the food chain by any means necessary. Sometimes we need to just stop and smile (line 5).
Determining musical genres is one of the most highly debated topics in the music world. To some, there are strict walls that separate classical from baroque music and jazz from the blues, but to others, the many overlapping qualities between opera and operettas make the line between their labels very
With a great deal of different genres of music available for listening to, each genre must effect, shape, and allow for the expression of personality to be contrasting with each of the different genres of music that are available to us. In a recent study executed by Yair Neuman, Leonid Perlovsky, Yochai Cohen and Danny Livshits, from the Department of Education & Homeland Security Institute, based their experiment on “a very specific research question: Do personality types differ in terms of their essays’ similarity to the lyrics of various music genres?” (4). They set up their experiment to solely test whether a person’s personality can be directly affected by certain types of music. Their experiment concluded “…all results were statistically
Although millions of people listen to music everyday, many people never take notice of how many genres exist throughout the world. Two genres that take popular notice in the music industry, that may be considered as “opposite sides of the coin”, the genres can easily be compared and contrasted, no matter which compare or contrast side is favored. The Broadway genre, which is notably alongside musical theatrics, or simply theatrics in general, is not only for the sophisticated population in it’s essence, but is even favored by adolescents of all ages. Due to the variety of musicals that have been created throughout the past one hundred years, there is a musical for any type of person, no matter how much or how little they favor the Broadway genre. The rap genre, however, can seem extremely different from most genres of music. Nevertheless, if a person finds an area of the rap genre that comes to their own liking, they may come to the realization that not all of it is the same, which can be true. Typically, rap, which stands for “rhythm and poetry”, has a fast paced, recurring beat, with a vocalist rhythmically speaking patterned lyrics throughout a song. In many popular songs today, rap can take up an entire song, or simply be put in a single verse in another vocalist’s performance. Although the rap genre and Broadway genre are slightly similar in terms of the music production, they are, however, significantly different in the way that they are performed, and the reasons why