Words, Words, Words…
When writing, talking, or singing, your words matter. People will listen to you, you have the ability to change the lives of others and make them see that you too want to make a difference. Instead, the rappers of today would like to compare a brand that they think is popular, like Versace and compare it to the cheese on their broccoli, there are the struggles they are facing. Rapping has become a game of who can throw the most shade, or who can say they did the “most”. “ It’s not that you can’t make good songs without talking about your struggle. Rap is a way that people talk about struggle. But artists, when you talk about women in vulgar ways and how much weed you smoked last night, that is not struggle. Struggle is when you got home from school and there was an eviction notice on the door. Its when your parents weren’t there for you, and when the water got cut off and you couldn’t take a bath.” The struggle of rapping is that you can’t just rap about what you think people want to hear, you have to try to stand up and make a difference again, I mean, “What happened to good hip hop that rapped about love, struggle, and the joy of life without talking about guns, banging multiple women, and how much money you have?”.
While you have some people talking about their stoves, or how important they are, you also have people making a difference like L-Fresh the Lion, he is making all this uproar in Australia, about his story. “The song reflects on my personal experiences with racism. The lyrics are quite clear. I tell it how it is: upfront and in your face. This is my story; my reflections on my dealings with racism and discrimination.” He uses the power of people to take a stand against Australia’s outlook.
While most people think Australia is racially equal, he points out that “We’ve still got a ways to go. We have national political discourse, which utilizes language in such a way so as to have a negative influence on the dominant public culture in this country. As a result, it’s not surprising to hear of everyday people in Australia being subjected to racism and discrimination.” I chose him, because he speaks his mind and tries to make a difference and to make a stand that “This is a song that deals with the struggle of obtaining a sense of belonging in a country that still has a long way to go in regards to accepting people from all walks of life.”
Your lyrics and what you want others to know about you can make you or break you. As GZA speaks up about his Wu Tang days, he makes it known that “Bottom line is they all had messages, but nowadays it’s changed. You’ve got shorties talking gangster stuff — they put music out about that and they’re not really about that life. And then you bring that energy to you and it changes the dynamics of the industry. We don’t have songs like “Self Destruction” or “We’re All In The Same Gang” anymore. Rappers aren’t grabbing you anymore, it’s not pulling me in. What can I get from talking about my car? It’s irrelevant. It’s not about the art form anymore. I think it was Chaka Khan who said, “I would sing for nothing because this is what I love to do.” It was never about money for me. There’s a line we had in Wu-Tang for years:
Rappers need to start rapping as if they want to do something about what;s going on in the world then they need to make an image and “ who can craft the wittiest, the most intellectual, the smartest and the cleverest rhymes. It’s always been that for us as MCs from Day One. It’s the same for me now. It’s all about the story.”
