This post has been pending for quite some time, but I’ve finally gotten around to finishing it. When I was in Pakistan last month, I had a wedding to attend. During the week of the wedding, there were a lot of family gatherings at my grandma’s place. One of my little cousins, who is in 5th grade, had exams during that week and needed to take out time at the family gatherings to study for them.
In one of the family gatherings, my cousin had to study for a grammar test. She brought her grammar book with her and I decided to help her revise for it. As I was going through the book that she had to revise from, I stumbled upon a chapter dedicated to dragons. The chapter was called, Wu and the Yellow Dragon.
Chapter 5 of My Cousin’s Grammar Book - Wu and the Yellow Dragon featuring images of a green dinosaur, crocodile, and komodo dragon
When I saw this page, I thought “Why!? Leave me alone, Dui Zhang!” What’s amusing is that the title of the chapter is called Wu and the Yellow Dragon. Let me repeat, “Wu,” AND, “dragon.” Great! But notice how there is a crocodile right in the bottom-center of the page! Do you know what that reminded me of? It reminded me of this…
I haven’t listened to many of 2pac‘s songs, but my parents have mentioned him several times when I used to talk to them about music in my early teen years and they’ve mainly said good things about him. There is a lot of mystery surrounding his “disappearance,” and having heard about particular conspiracies, I can understand what may have happened.
2pac was a very deep person when it came to social issues and it is easy to tell that he always wanted the best for everyone in society. Now that I sit and pay close attention to the message in his songs, I can understand the hardships that many rappers like him must have gone through in their life, most of it due to poverty (this is the root of most issues such as drug abuse, chain smoking, etc), which also led them into accepting the offer of joining the entertainment industry. I like 2pac‘s song, Changes. It is a song with a deep message.
Most rap artists were once normal people that wanted an easy way out of the troubles that they were surrounded in while growing up. One may ask, “What troubles?” As mentioned before, one of the main troubles is poverty. If the government does not provide adequate support for a group of people and discriminates them or treats them as inferior, then there are bound to be problems in that society. There will also be people, who are poor, that will try to get out of that situation at any cost. One of them being exchanging the hard life for a life of money and fame.
Surprisingly, a few rap artists realize that they would rather be free than be caught up with money and fame. They even mention it in some of their songs. They talk about the entertainment industry and the government quite a bit. However, as soon as they start voicing their opinions, they know that the people that they work for will turn their back on them. Some rap artists that have wanted to change themselves for the better and to help society have met trouble by the people that initially helped them out from the poverty or tough life that they once had.
I used to judge rap artists a lot, since I’ve mainly heard them sing about money, fame, and other materialistic desires, but that has changed over time. I still don’t like certain rap artists that corrupt the youth through their songs. The only ones I respect are the ones that are old-school, since their lyrics are much cleaner and deep, and the ones that truly want to send out a positive message.
Having had the privilege of growing up in a multicultural environment, I have had the opportunity to meet kids, who knew about the Bloods and the Crips. It is from them that I understood what the “thug life” is all about. I actually found it amusing ’cause it’s like one group identifies themselves with the color red and the other with the color blue. It sounds similar to K-Pop groups that have a particular color that represents a fandom =P Just kidding!
Overall, I prefer listening to songs with great lyrics and a deep message. Changes by 2pac happens to be one of them.
