This was an essay for English. I had fun with it, and my English teacher felt the need to put "I
heart YOU, KRYSTAL!" at the bottom when she read it, so... Enjoy, folks.
“Uhh, I got this shorty on my block always clockin my rocks
He likes the style and profile I think he wanna mock
He likes the way I walk, he sees my money talkin
to honies hawkin I'm the hottest n**** in New York and
I see his hunger pains, I know his blood boils
He wanna, run with me, I know this kid'll be loyal
I watched him make a few ends, to cop his little sneakers and gear
then it's just enough for re-up again
I see myself in his eyes, I moved from Levi's
to Guess to Versace, now it's diamonds like Liberace
That's just the natural cycle, nobody wanna be like Michael
where I'm from, just them n****z who bounce from a gun
We out here trying to make hard white into cohhhhld green
I can help shorty blow out like Afro-Sheen
Plus I can relive my days of youth which is gone
That little n****'s peeps, it's time to put him on
It's time to come up (and hold my own weight, defend my crown)
Gots to lock it down and when they rush (stand my ground)
It's time to come up (stick up my chest, and make some loot)
Gots to lock it down and when they rush (stand on my own two)”
So, I ask you, does half of that even sound like English? Not really? Well, tell me. What’s the attraction to rap music? This is a part of “Coming of Age” by Jay-Z. Looking at my word processor… I count fifteen improper uses of language, spelling and grammar. And that’s just the things the computer can recognize. This is a man that many American youths, and not-so-youths, look up to this man and many others like him. Somehow, men like this have become some of the wealthiest people in America.
How’s this happened? Social trend.
Rap music has a basic, primal rhythm and is easy to understand. Requiring no real thought or introspection, it fills you with a heavy bass line that’ll shake your flesh from your bones and rattle your brain in your skull. Heavy on the slang and Ebonics, light on musical value.
Many will thump out the sermon that it’s a cultural experience. Culture? Where? Was it lost somewhere between the lines of “screw a ‘ho” and “shoot a cop”? Buried somewhere in the mountains of drugs to sniff and smoke? Sold off like their pride? Children look up to these people. And thus that leads to incidents like what happened to my neighbors’ daughter. She’s in kindergarten and some little boy in her class came and grabbed her up and smashed her head into the swing set pole. There’s a roaring condom trade at the elementary school. There’re pregnant grade schoolers in the very not-third-world America. Nine year olds, in some neighborhoods, have been smoking for a couple years.
It speaks to the problems of inner city life? More like deluding children into believing that they’ve, by birthright, got a harder life than anyone else, that they can never rise above it. Giving them an excuse for poor behavior. Giving them poor role models to emulate.
