Kendrick Lamar's Swimming Pools: An Analysis Of Rap

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More Than Music “Pour up, drank, head shot, drank; sit down, drank, stand up, drank; pass out, drank, wake up, drank; Faded, drank, faded, drank.” The lyrics of Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pools (Drank)” echo through the house only long enough for someone else to hear it and demand it be shut off immediately. Your heart sinks. Reaching for your headphones, you give up your fruitless attempt of trying to explain the music to someone who refuses to listen to it. A musical elitist claims it is just another one of those damn kids playing that damn music advocating drug use, violence, and a blatant mistreatment of humans. But here is where we need to take a step back: what is the content of your God-sent music? You like classic rock? You mean …show more content…

The genre was created by marginalized minorities. Most historians trace hip hop back to the Bronx, a New York City borough, in 1973 (“Hip Hop”). As the musical genre progressed into what is now known as rap, it gradually became more about the death and destruction occurring in these neighborhoods. In the 1980’s, unemployment in the inner city skyrocketed. By the 1990’s, in the midst of rap music’s sprawling popularity, drugs were seen as a possible route to survival even though the path led to possible incarceration (Moore). Of course this wasn’t the road everyone took, but this was the way rappers acted in order to get a record deal, embracing the exciting stigma of doing whatever necessary to survive the concrete jungle. It’s no coincidence that in the 90’s, when rap music embraced these ideas about drugs and violence, the genre rapidly popularized in suburbs throughout the country. The brutal environment where many rappers grew up is a major factor of the content of the …show more content…

He still wants to make it out of his city and dreams of attaining riches, but this time he has turned to selling drugs and resorted to crime because it seems to be all he can manage to do to make it out alive and accomplish his dreams. In the hook following this verse, J Cole takes the first person perspective of the gunman stealing the watch. This further adds on to his previous point that “anybody is a killer, all you gotta do is push ‘em to the limits.” J Cole’s masterful storytelling abilities broadcast the hardships of growing up like he did while simultaneously puting rap’s depth of content on

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