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| Lupe Fiasco |
Although there is a lot of people in the hip hop industry that are the epitome of materialistic people and those who do things in consumerist ways there are those who don’t. Not every hip hop artist is all about the money, cars, and other expensive things. There are those artists who sing and write music because that is what they love to do and they sing what they feel and what is going on in their life. Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, better known as Lupe Fiasco, is one of those artists who write music because that is what he loves doing and he writes for himself as well as for his audience. Lupe Fiasco is an artist from Chicago who became famous in 2006 with his album “Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor.” One of Lupe’s famous songs is called “The show goes on.” In this song Lupe talks about some hardships that people go through when they are growing up. In one part of his song he says “So no matter what you been through, No matter what you into, No matter what you see when you look outside your window, Brown grass or green grass, Picket fence or barbed wire, Never ever put them down, You just lift your arms higher, Raise em till’ your arms tired, Let em’ know you’re their, That you struggling and survivin’ that you gonna persevere (Music and Lyrics).” Basically what he is saying here is that no matter what you are going through you should never give up and always strive to overcome obstacles in your life. That was only one portion of the song but that is what the whole song is about. There is a couple different things that can be done to reduce consumerism in hip hop. One fix to this problem is for artists to write their music more for themselves. Many artists write their music based on what the audience wants which I understand but at the same time they need to write music for themselves too. These artists should write more about how they feel and what they have been through. Another fix to this problem would be for artists to write songs and sing for a reason other than the money. There are some artists who sing just for the money. If they did it because they love doing it then I feel it would be less of a materialistic game.
Your alternative suggestion looks very good and I absolutely agree that if more artists wrote music for themselves then hip hop culture wouldn't be so much about consuming. Even though this is a great idea, a lot of artists only care about the money and the hip hop industry is still producing their music. Have you ever thought that maybe the people in charge of the record labels should change also? Artists have power but not as much as the people in charge. So you shouldn't only target the artists but also the the men & women managing record labels.
ReplyDeleteYour alternative suggestion post is very good! It gives a great example of a rapper who isn't completely focused on the consumerism aspect of hip-hop.
ReplyDeleteMy question to you is why do you think if rappers rapped more about themselves and what they've been through then hip-hop would be less of a materialistic game?
Overall, this post is very informative! The only thing I would change is the color of the second part of the post.
Tyler, what happened with the different color font here?
ReplyDelete