ever! Run is letting it be know that this song is for non-original, unskilled, and lyrically deficient rappers. This has got to be one of the baddest (not bad as in bad but bad meaning good) intro lines in a rap song. I will be looking at Run’s first verse only.įor all you sucker MC’s perpetratin’ a fraud So I posed the question (to myself), did they have grounds to make such statements? Were they actually better than their contemporaries such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Kurtis Blow, The Fat Boys, and Whodini? Well, let’s see if their statements were true in the context of their time. Run-DMC caused a ruckus and their lyrics boasted in pure self-aggrandizement. This song was boisterous, outlandish, gritty, and contained elements of rock through Eddie Martinez’s guitar riffs and solo. The popular “Rock Box” was the 3 rd single released off their début album. I decided to analyze rap pioneers Run-DMC’s hit “ Rock Box.” It was the top rap song in 1984. So, I thought it would be interesting to look at a hip-hop song that preceded Jay’s by twenty years to examine its truthiness. But what about an analysis of hip-hop when it was young and didn’t know any better? What about when it was still learning how to walk in those white patent leather baby shoes while sucking it’s thumb? Or when it was trying to figure out which way It was going to swing to get it’s future swag just right? What about that? Yep, it’s all grown up! Analysis of today’s hip-hop is amazing in terms of the converging cultures and musical genres. Now it often comments on social events, cultural phenomena, political topics, and can easily facilitate a global conversation. Hip-hop in the millennium has matured and has earned the right to stay out late. In 2004, hip-hop had long since solidified itself as a more than viable musical genre. Ultimately, I was inspired to analyze the lyrics of a hip-hop song to see what I’d come up with–albeit not as thorough as Dr. Anyway these songs can easily have multiple meanings and no doubt make meaningful contributions and commentary in political, cultural, and social spheres.Īfter reading the Huffington Post article, I began thinking about analyzing songs. Some examples of this would be Eric Burdon and War’s 1970 hit “ Spill The Wine,” or any one of Parliament/Funkadelic or James Brown’s joints and even The Beatles’ “I am The Walrus”–wait, scratch that–we all know there is only one meaning to that song. In some cases, lyric meanings, minus the input from the author/artist, can be endless because the song’s connotation is left to the listener, reader, and interpreter. For example, lyrics in a cultural context are vast and often times hinge on the biases of the interpreter and certainly the era (decade of interpretation), and goal of the analysis. The meaning of lyrics in a given context can yield numerous results. Mason went line by line to set the legal record straight on J’s rap.įorthrightly, I am fascinated by lyric analysis. I perused most of the paper and it was damn good. I followed the link from the article to get a glimpse of the paper. His paper explored the truthiness (thanks Colbert) of H.O.V.A.’s 2 nd verse. at Southwestern Law School, titled JAY-Z’S 99 PROBLEMS, VERSE 2: A CLOSE READING WITH FOURTH AMENDMENT GUIDANCE FOR COPS AND PERPS. Last month I had the opportunity to read an article on the Huffington Post site about Jay Z’s 2004 hit “ 99 Problems.” The article discussed a well overdue paper written by associate law professor Caleb Mason, Ph.D.
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