Last Friday, I read a (slam?)poem in class called Motives and Thoughts by Lauryn Hill. As I mentioned to the class, it was first heard in 2005 on Def Jam by Lauryn Hill. Def Jam was an American Record Label that was focused mostly on hip hop and urban music. It was founded by Rick Rubin at NYU University in the early 1980’s. The first recordings were put out in 1984, and as the decade continued, various other groups were signed onto the record. In 1998, it was merged into the Universal Music Group. In the 2000s, the company spread to other countries including Japan and Germany. The famous Jay-Z became the president of the company as well, and once the leadership was passed on, the company didn’t last for much longer. In April of 2014, it was decided that the label would no longer be active.
As a side note, and something that many of you have already been exposed to, Erykah Badu (another female rap artist), did a slam poem on Def Jam in 2003 that is really fun to watch and listen to. The link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEXu6UmRPZc
I encourage you to watch it.
Anyways, Lauryn Hill’s performance took place sort of in the middle of her phasing out of the rap scene. She had decided that she wasn’t very satisfied with the pressure of fame and the music industry. So, it was significant that she made this appearance on Def Jam. The whole poem is sort of a critique of our society, though, and so I think she may have been comfortable coming out with something that was strong worded. The poem also teeters between rap and poetry because it has a lot of the “couplets” like rap, but isn’t as fast.
Rotating bodies, confusion of sound
Negative imagery, holding us down
Social delusion, clearly constructed
Human condition, morals corrupted
This is the first four lines of the poem, and we can see a type of rhythm already. I enjoyed both listening to it and reading it, but I also want to touch on what Lauryn Hill is actually talking about. She begins by talking about our society and how there is “negative imagery” and “social delusion.” She is shedding light on how the media affects our perception of the things around us. A line in the first stanza,
wicked theology, robbing the poor,
is saying that the less fortunate people in our world are the ones who suffer the most from our corrupt system. I think that although this doesn’t mention anything about race, we can infer that Hill is talking about black communities in our nation because of the generally higher poverty rates there. The poem continues, talking about the fact that we are all “hoes” in this society -- used as tools to do the work that our government wants us to without any good reason. There are some other good lines that serve as good examples to what Hill is trying to get at:
Primitive man with civilized knowledge
System collapse and he still won’t acknowledge
God is the saviour, studies behavior
Trying to fix the mix mind he gave ya
Although I think the poem is important to interpret on its own without knowing Lauryn Hill’s background, I do want to mention that she is pretty religious. I think she includes “God” in her poem to challenge the idea of our society always turning to science even when there is another source. I do think, however, that she also criticizes the institutionalized practice of religion in her poem, and believes that she has a different kind of relationship with God than anyone else. Towards the end of her poem, she has two blocks of:
Motives and thoughts
Check your motives and thoughts
that have another stanza in between them. I actually had the class read those with me on the whim (because we were all pretty tired and so I figured it would wake people up/help people understand the poem more), and I thought that it was nice for everyone to let those words sink in a little more. I think those lines serve as reminders to the reader/listener of this poem, but other people thought they were also messages to God or to Lauryn, herself. The end of the poem
Blind with the wickedness, deep in your heart
Modern day wickedness is all you’ve been taught
Lied to your neighbors, so you get ahead
Modern day trickery is all you’ve been fed
explains that people don’t know any better than to assume the worst of one another or thinking about the real consequences of things. There is more I could say, but I have already gone on for a while. I am wondering if Hill has the right to critique our society so strongly -- it seemed in class that the general vibe is that she doesn’t really. If we think about some of the rap we’ve listened to in class over the past couple of weeks, haven’t there been some strong critiques like this as well? The genre of “protest rap” is strong in this way, and I am only wondering if gender is involved. As in, does this poem come off strongly or stronger than other male rap artists because Lauryn Hill is a woman? If anyone has any opinions or comments, I would love to hear them. Thanks!
The link for Lauryn Hill’s live performance of Motives and Thoughts is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kntNPyThiH0
Not knowing a lot of female rappers, Lauryn Hill definitely raps about different things than male rappers such as Kanye West and Jay-Z. Both of these rappers do address social issues and whatnot, but Hill seems to take a stronger stance on it. It could also be that there is a difference in purpose. Hill might just solely be focusing on protest rap, like how Wright and other black writers felt black writers should only write protest novels. And West and Jay-Z are writing raps for the sake of writing raps, like how Ellison (to some degree) and Hurston write for the sake of writing.
ReplyDeleteDong Ha's usage of the word "might" seemed really important to me. I think it is really easy for us to make assumptions because we want to see more meaning in something. Is Lauryn Hill rapping about social issues because, as a woman, she feels more discriminated against than a man might and therefore these issues are more obvious to her? Or did some other factor play a role in her desire to address these issues? While it very easily could be that she is more attuned to social issues because she is discriminated against as a woman, and part of me wants that to be true because I think it would be more interesting, that could also not be the case, so I don't know if we can really answer your question without knowing more about her (and I know nothing about her except her name and that she performed this slam poem, so maybe it isn't even my place to be commenting on this post).
ReplyDelete"Negative imagery, holding us down
ReplyDeleteSocial delusion, clearly constructed"
Thanks for pointing our that she's talking about the media here--I didn't see that when I was first reading it but that totally makes sense.
That does bring up the question of what the "social delusion" is. Because if it is the constant "negative imagery" of the media (the media is known to focus on a lot of feel-bad stories, murders, etc.), then would the delusion be that things are in a worse state than they are? That seems like it would be very interesting, but it doesn't really fit with a protest poem.