Looking at life narratives, and all the different forms they may take, whether it be counter-narrative, memoir, autobiogrpahy, or biography, similar elements and abstractions seem to be influential across the board. When Professor McNeill, our professor in ASTU, gave us the idea of writing this blog post about musicians, and the life narratives they produce, I thought it would be interesting to think about and look into not just the actual books and stories they write themselves, but songs they produce that in turn have a life narrative aspect to them, and relate to the abstractions we have studies in class.

When looking at songs produced by many of the popular artists of today, I see similar ideas to what we have been studying in class arise. Some examples of these are mis/representation, community, and silence. To see how these abstractions fit into the music scene, and in particular, the rap scene, I inspected two specific artists: Joey BADA$$, Kendrick Lamar.

Looking at the subjects and focal points of songs by Joey BADA$$ and Kendrick Lamar, talk about misrepresentation of African-American individuals and their mistreatment is uncovered. Here are some lyrics from the song “Like Me” by Joey BADA$$ that serve to illustrate these issues,

Cause every time I make a move they be sweating me
They want another black man in penitentiary

It’s even hard for that man standing next to me
Cause he could catch a bullet that was really meant for me

It’s like every step bring me close to destiny
And every breath I get closer to the death of me

I’m just tryna carry out my own legacy
But the place I call home ain’t letting me

Here, Joey attempts to uncover silences and display misrepresentations of black people in America, by bringing light to police brutality within his own life and community. Watching the music video (WARNING, explicit, clean version here), a part displays Joey being shot and killed by police officers, but then coming back to life. When he rises, he begins to walk the streets of New York City and sees all those that have been killed due to police shootings, bringing them back to life as he passes by. This song shares similarities to what Kendrick Lamar does in the first few lines of his hit song “Alright” (WARNING, explicit, clean version here),

Uh, and when I wake up
I recognize you’re lookin’ at me for the pay cut

But homicide be lookin’ at you from the face down

What Mac-11 even boom with the bass down

Here, Lamar references people looking at him for the “pay cut”, referencing the industry and its obsession with cash but not care, only caring about Lamar because of the money he returns to them due to what Schaffer and Smith would arguably describe as the commodification of his life (11). In the second two lines, he references police brutality and killings in America, speaking for the black community who is at more risk than any other racial group to be a victim of gun violence. Here, Lamar attempts to uncover what Carter would describe as a “forced silence” (Carter 218), which is created due to the presence of institutional racism in the US, or what Jennifer García and Mienah Sharif would describe in their article, ““Black Lives Matter: A Commentary on Racism and Public Health”, as “salient structural racism” (1). This forced silence is also a direct relation to the pressing issue of media representations and their dominant frames of focus (Jiwani & Young 902), which seem to still exclude, or portray black people in worse ways then white people, as seen in this article. What I find extremely interesting is Lamar’s acknowledgement of this silence, as he makes a reference to a Mac-11, a type of firearm, which is silenced. I believe the silence of the gun serves to reference the fact that black people in the states are in a state of silence.

These two songs serve as examples of the ability of artists to use music, lyrics, and film as a forms of life narrative, describing their own lives, while also those of a more general community. Other examples lie in an abundance of works, including more personal ones, such as King Krule’s Rock Bottom, Ceiling, and Cementality, which describe a multitude of internal struggles with his own mind (worth a listen), or in Bob Marley’s Crazy Baldhead, where he speaks more generally of his family’s history in America, and the slave trade.

 

Works Cited:

García, Jennifer Jee-Lyn, and Mienah Zulfacar Sharif. “Black Lives Matter: A Commentary on Racism and Public Health.” American Journal of Public Health 105.8 (2015): E27-30. ProQuest. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Communication 31.4 (2006): 895-917. ProQuest. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

Schaffer, Kay and Sidonie Smith. “Conjunctions: Life Narratives in the Field of Human Rights.” Biography 27.1 (2004): 1-24. JSTOR. Web. 2 Oct. 2015.