Monthly Archives: March 2021

Writing For Me

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“You broke my heart girl you rent it in two 

Now it’s not fun to be out with the crew 

I write these songs just to numb all this pain 

I can’t forget you they echo your name” 

-King Nito

“Baby tell me what you want 

Let’s make a deal 

I can give you what you want If you tell me how you feel  

We can trade…”

– King Nito 

“I be round these treeshes and hoes that just want my salami 

These thots really wilding they all on my body 

Im tryna do different I can’t let them block me 

No… 

Baby your a Queen” 

-King Nito 

I am my own biggest fan. Although I am only showing you ONE of my favorite songs from myself, I love all of my babies. Growing up my life was hectic, dealing with a father who always showed me toxic masculinity, as an attempt to make me tuff, I felt like it was emasculating to be vulnerable or to open up. Even though I couldn’t open up and talk about problems, things were still happening, my life was still declining and my mental state was always being altered. Until I found music. I wrote my first rap at 8 years old after I learned that my father was again sent to prison. “My name is Jimmy, got plenty of Knowledge, That’s why I’m going to COLLEGE!!” Lol. Now it sounds so basic but this is when I learned that although I didn’t feel comfortable opening up to people I didn’t have to hold in the things I was feeling. It took alot for me to become “my own biggest fan” and it began with me having to look at my life and realize who I am as a person. 

In high school I was well known for being one of the people you can pass the mic to during a cypher at lunch and this reputation made me veer off the path of authentic content. I began rapping to please a crowd and not to express my problems. This is obvious because in some of my first works I said things that I wasn’t really living. For example, “My whole hood show me love, I can crip walk with the bloods”. While I am affiliated with some bloods whether through family groups or just friends I don’t actively take part in these types of activities. One day my father listened to my music and his first question was, “Jerome are you really in these screets?” When I said “no” he told me the best advice that I ever got in my life. He said, “Stop writing for people and write for you, Write what you live. When you put yourself in your music that’s when everybody gon like it. And if they don’t ohh well. But you will never lose yourself as a supporter.” From that moment on I stopped rapping and started “singing”. I was able to get back to my origins and shamelessly become vulnerable in my music understanding that I write for me. My friends at the time who only rapped clowned me for singing, telling me they needed the old Jimmy back. The “Bust a nigga head open Jimmy” but fortified in my music I laughed it off and kept singing. (It’s funny because now all those friends try to sing and protect their melodic voices) 

Now, I can honestly say that to me I write the best songs ever. My girlfriend hates it when I say that however, when I listen to my songs I’m hearing my story. In Love Affair, I’m talking about how I feel emotionally stuck in a “love affair” with a girl because every time I feel like I have to leave her to chase my dreams she shows me she will still love me, wait for me and be there. She shows me that I can chase my dream and be confident that she will add to me while she waits. So in response I say…

“I’m stuck in a Love Affair (with you)

I’m stuck in a Love Affair (for real) 

I’m stuck in a Love Affair (it’s true)

I’m stuck in a Love Affair (i’m scared)

cuz I gave you no reason to love me

But girl that’s the reason I love you” 

In conclusion, I have to apologize. I am NOT writing to all the people in the class right now. This is a little bit of my story to provide inspiration for the content creators in the class. If you want to be your own “biggest fan”, I recommend you write about your life. This way you can always ensure that whatever you create will remain timeless in your mind. If your work matters to you then it will always matter to others. Don’t cheat the people out of hearing their own story in your music because you are trying to sound cool or go mainstream. I am so happy that I listened to my father that day and if you as a content creator apply this tip… you will be happy as well. 

I chose this song because I love the narrative. It tells a story about a love struck individual who tries to escape from a woman to focus on his career but for some reason he can’t. This is what he calls a “Love Affair” In the song King Nito uses repetition. The chorus is not only repeated multiple times in the song but the phrase “I’m stuck in a love affair” is repeated four times in the chorus. As a listener I find myself hypnotized by the melody. Speaking of melody his music would be categorized as melodic rap as he takes strategies from both genres of music to make something totally different. Another aspect for the song is the Harmonies. I love how not only the background vocals are not only harmonizing with the more prominent vocals, but also serves as ad libs for the song. There is a dynamic feel of the song as we progress there is a change in how things are said. For example the third time that Nito sings the chorus, the whole song becomes distorted and warped and as a result It’s easy to forget about the amount of repetition. I feel like this song is perfect because the repetition did not overwhelm the song, but rather added to the transformation of the method of the song.  As a result of the format the song actually embodied the story. Where as listeners we were literally “stuck in a love affair” after every verse. Every other part of the song, Verse one, verse Two, bridge was ended with the same words. “I’m stuck in a love affair”. As a result the listeners are “stuck in a cycle” as King Nito “is stuck in a love affair.”

Narrative- The story that is told in the song.

Repetition- When a word or phrase is repeated in order to get the listener to remember it. (Usually the name of the song)

Melody- A linear succession of musical tone that the listener perceives as a single entity. 

Harmonies- Combination of musical notes sung or played simultaneously.

Ad-libs- A word or sound that is recorded but wasn’t pre-planned. It enhances the other parts of the song. 

Dynamic- A song that changes as it progresses.

 

 

Can’t Die-Juice WRLD

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The song I have decided to choose for my record club is “Can’t Die” by Juice Wrld. I believe every song he has the lyrics are very powerful and catches anyone’s attention very fast. Juice Wrld was struggling with addiction, anxiety, and depression. The fear of getting judged by the world has created an inner devil for Juice Wrld. The song Can’t Die is a very deep song that speaks directly to the audience about how he “can’t die” because he “never was alive”. That statement for the most part also touches on the depression that he feels due to the death of his loved ones, in addition to sympathizing with others who are going through the same. In the first chorus,

“Sometimes it feels like I can’t die, ’cause I never was alive”

Then in verse two, he sings

“Cross my heart, hope to survive”.

When Juice Wrld is singing you can really hear the acoustic guitar and you can pick up how the beat of the tone is more sincere and genuine like you hear the passion he has for music. As an audience, we can really notice when he raps he is very heartfelt but also when he sings it’s more calming and his vocals create a sense of sadness/pain. Expressing his emotions through his music really allows his audience to connect more with him, soecally about mental health. Many individuals use his music as an escape from reality and transport to somewhere they feel safe.

This song is considered a hip hop/rap genre. The chorus, verses, and the bridge in the song really create a sense of honesty and gives the audience a visual of his life and his mental health through the art of music. The song has a combination of a beat, tempo, chorus, and tone that really makes the music more smooth and creates a balance.

Musical Terms: 

Chorus: It is a repeated section in the music, and it is a common song structure, and usually it is repeated at least twice in a song.

Beat: it is a regular pulse in music that allows the dancers/audience to go with the beat and music to run smoothly.

Tempo: the speed at which the music is or should be played. 

Tone: is an attitude of a writer toward a subject or an audience. The tone in the music can be anywhere from informal to formal, cheerful, or sad.

Bowie’s Duet with Himself

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I made my first infographic. Or a stab at one. My students are making some, so I thought I should try it too.

Bowie recorded “A Space Oddity”  in 1968. It was his first real hit record–in 1969 in Britain and 1972 in the U.S. Famously, it tells the story of Major Tom, a fictional version of an early astronaut. In 1961, the first human, Russian Yuri Gagarin, traveled to space and orbited the earth. After that, the Americans and the Russians entered a “space race,” vying for a series of firsts, including getting a human to the surface of the moon.

Bowie wrote his first hit in response to the space race–and Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey.* I started my infographic to test a hypothesis: Bowie used the eeriness of the first humans in space as an early experiment with performing as a persona. Throughout his career, he’d become famous for his theatrical personas, including Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, and Alladin Sane. I learned from Chris O’Leary’s detailed analysis of the track that it was originally written as a duet. When he recorded it, Bowie turned it into a duet with himself.

Through the process of composing the infographic, I became more convinced the song is a duet between Bowie and Bowie. But the experiment is more complex than I imagined at first. The second line of colored bars represents the song’s narrators, or personas. Blue is the operator at Ground Control, and pink Major Tom “floating in his tin can.” The purple bar represents a second hypothesis. After Major Tom sings “Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows,” the persona shifts.

At first it seems obvious that Ground Control sings the heartbreaking second half of the verse: “Your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong / Can you hear me Major Tom?” But what if both narrators are singing? What if Major Tom is singing along with Ground Control? While Ground Control addresses these panicked messages to him, Major Tom joins in. “She knows” might signal the fact that his wife knows he loves her AND that she’s heard the news that something has gone horribly wrong. This is interpretive speculation, but if it’s true, the double narrators amplify the deep sadness of the story. Major Tom sings with full awareness that nobody on earth can hear him.

Throughout his career, Bowie was reverent about well-crafted pop songs; he also loved to experiment with form. You can already see that with “A Space Oddity.” The verses are catchier than the chorus. We get two full verses and a bridge before the chorus even comes in. Bowie is subtly upending the logic of the traditional pop hit, partly to emphasize the dialogue, or duet, between Ground Control and Major Tom.

Some of the complexities of the method become clear when you examine his various approaches to the vocal. The melody evolves from verse to verse. The first begins low and mysterious. After the first few lines, he doubles his voice, alternating harmony with singing the same melody in two octaves. The higher parts presage the higher, more emotive vocal of the B verse. In the C verse, the harmony continues for the first half, but then fades, with an intimate delivery of the line “Tell my wife I love her very much.” After this, the vocal is doubled again–this time in unison, duplicating the same melody. There’s a full two minutes of music after the final verse. As the vocal fades, his duet with himself feels unresolved as it’s overtaken by the chaos of the instrumental outro. Like Major Tom and Ground Control, we don’t know what’s going to become of the astronaut in his “tin can,” but the signs are not good.

*A literary note: Kubrick’s title is a play on Homer’s The Odyssey. He takes the classic tale of a warrior’s journey and gives it a bleak, futuristic twist. Bowie substitutes the soundalike, “oddity,” a wry contribution to literary history in keeping with his various outsized personas.

Acknowledgements

Chris O’Leary’s analysis of “A Space Oddity,” on his blog Pushing Ahead of the Dame, Bowie Song by Song, helped me understand the structure of the song. I got inspiration for the form of my infographic from Ethan Hein’s “track analysis” of Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” 

Check out the song yourself. If you have other interpretations, I’d love to hear about them in the Comments section. Watching Bowie perform it is pretty moving. And notice that he includes an abstract visualization of the music in the video!

“Feel” – Robbie Williams

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The song I have decided to choose for the record club is “Feel” by Robin William. The lyrics to this song are so powerful and catch my attention immediately. It is such a deep song that it lifts the spirit and feeds the soul. Also, of course, it makes me reflect a lot, when I have a bad day I listen to it with my eyes closed and the song transports me to a more cheerful place. Life is short and unfortunately we don’t know how to live it. I speak personally about myself, I value my life very much and the young adult that I am becoming. Although sometimes I would have liked to make different decisions thinking more about myself and not filling other people’s expectations. There is a specific part of the song I love and is very stuck in my head :

“Not sure I understand

This role I’ve been given

I sit and talk to God

And he just laughs at my plans

My head speaks a language

I don’t understand”

This song  is considered a pop genre and a very strong chorus presence. it may be interpreted as being lost and not knowing which path to take and wanting to feel real love. Life is not perfect and most of the time it is not as we wish it was. This song I relate to,  will keep on listening and sharing it with my friends. The beat, ambient and presence just combine so well makes the song such a creative masterpiece. Overall what a great song that has a powerful meaning, at least to me it does. 

Terms:

– Chorus: The part of a song with the same melody and words each time it’s heard – I’ll sing the verses, and you sing the choruses.

– Tempo:  The speed at which a passage of music is or should be played.

-Beat: The regular pulse in music that dancers move to and audiences clap to.

-Ambience: A style of gentle, largely electronic instrumental music with no persistent beat, used to create or enhance a mood or atmosphere.

-Presence: The quality in sound of the instrument (or sound source) being right there next to you.

-Genre-Pop: pop’, an abbreviation of ‘popular’, was originally used to refer to music which appealed to a wide audience. since the 1950’s, it has been closely associated with rock ‘n’ roll.

Ann Powers on QC POD

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My interview with Ann Powers is out. It was a really great experience. She’s wise, funny, articulate, curious. All that comes through in her writing. And it’s who she is. She writes with loving complexity that always feels accessible.

You can listen here. It’s also on Spotify, Apple Music, Stitcher, and other outlets.