This song is very emotional for the poor and blacks that grew up in a racist time and young people with no jobs. he song was a #1 hit in Norway and in The Netherlands and reached the top ten in the singles charts of several other countries. It is one of his most notable and popular songs that he made. Released posthumously on his album greatest hits, the song talks about all of the different issues that were related to 2Pac's era of influence, notably racism, police brutality, drugs, and gang violence. It states in the song that
see no changes wake up in the morning and I ask myself
"is life worth living should I blast myself?
I'm tired of bein' poor & even worse I'm black
my stomach hurts so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch
Cops give a damn about a negro
pull the trigger kill a nigga he's a hero"
Its showing how in the early 1990's the poor faced so many difficulties and police brutality of racism. Theirs so many important message being told from this song about how the life of a black person is. In this song history is showing, its true color. That's why Tupac Shakur is telling everyone for a change and make a better living but the government wouldn't help instead they wouldn't care about how the blacks were treated.One thing I would really like to say is that when you are in a room with white/Mexican/black/Japanese/etc. people, turn out the lights.we are all the same color and that's how Tupac explains himself in this song from growing up in the darkness of racism.
Good place to start - one interesting thing about Tupac is that his parents were active in the Black Panthers, whom we'll be looking at next week as we read Chapter 2 of The Art of Protest- looking at that chapter will be a good place to start in thinking about the background to his work.
ReplyDeleteThis article http://whosemedia.com/drums/2006/09/13/kevin-powell-on-tupac-from-2003-longer-alternate-version/ by a great writer and activist named Kevin Powell might also be helpful.