Comparing Murder To Excellence And Jay-Z's 2011 Watch The Throne

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Murder to Excellence is more than just a song of rags to riches, or the daily black struggle it transcends past that. In Kanye and Jay-Z’s 2011 Watch the Throne album, both artists create an opus that explains their view of societies in the inner city, the effect it had on their lives, and the hierarchy. The song is split into two parts, the Murder and the Excellence, thus the title Murder to Excellence which forms a transition. The first half of the song, the Murder, focuses on police brutality, racism, the black attitude in the inner city, and the “black-on-black murder.” (line 2) The Excellence is a “celebration of black excellence” (38), Jay-Z and Kanye’s rise to success, and the white monopoly in the hierarchy. For the black struggle …show more content…

He becomes aware and accepts the risk of losing his life on any given day. Kanye West breaks the persona and goes on to the third person point of view stating “plus his brother got shot repping his avenue” (16). The line could still be Kanye in his persona directed to the person he knew who had just been killed that afternoon or it could be direct to his persona’s brother. Also the use of diction is key, because the word brother could not mean a literal brother, but a close friend. Also the use of the word repping his avenue could be directed at gang affiliation or simply representing his home. Mr. West then proclaims that it’s time to “redefine black power”(17) because there can’t be black power if they’re mass murder and senseless killing of blacks. He uses a possible hyperbolic statement to prove his point of the mass murder, “41 souls murdered in fifty hours” (18). The hook takes over again and the words “paper reads “murder, black-on-black murder” /paper reads “murder, black-on-black murder” again”. It reasserts the central thematic message of the black-on-black murder crisis. Mr. West then raises the question if the murder of blacks a genocide. The violent mass murder of blacks has led the church to closing its doors to any more tombs, even the house of God is no longer open in the inner city. He feels the “pain in my city wherever I go”(27), the crime, the murder, the disfunction of families, Kanye West knows the pain of Chicago and it’s inhabitants. Mr. West then goes on to be factual and compare the deaths in Chicago to the deaths in Iraq, “314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago” (28). This makes a parallel between life in Chicago and a war, and that life in a structured American city has more mortalities than a chaotic war scene. The 509 who died in Chicago aren’t soldiers, however Kanye West wants to give them a sort of honor as soldiers who’ve died in

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