The West Side Connection and "Gangstas make the world go round."
When I was a little girl I grew up in foster care, exposing me to many different cultures and lifestyles. For the most part I was loved and well taken care of. There were few exceptions, but like the old saying goes, "one bad apple can spoil the bunch." These bad apples took me on a whirlwind of a downward spiral of emotion. In these tiffs of rebellion and depression I would place myself with people who felt just like me. The world owes us. Because of this crowd I listened to a lot of rap and music that all around belonged to a false image club.
Because of these life experiences I am talking about one of my favorite groups of my time. I can remember when the West Side Connection first came out. I was blown away by Ice Cube and Mac 10.
In the music video Gangsta make the world go round; Ice Cube Is sitting in his castle above the sky with his homies from the hood. Ice Cubes hand is over the planet leaving only a shadow for all the spectators to see. He is throwing up the “W” for west. It is as if he thinks that he is god.
He and his counterparts sit around as if they are knights sitting at the round table. They each take their turn with their raps that they have collaborated.
Ice Cube states, “No hesitation I could run a nation from incarceration, 30 years is what I’m facing.”
He makes it sound as if he is the all-powerful, even referring to himself as a black super hero. This is fascinating to me. Ice Cube has never been a gangsta.
Their body movement throughout the music video is like they believe they are invincible. They rap about how they make the world go round and that if it wasn’t for gangstas Wall Street would fall. They call every other free person in this world that are not gangstas, “Fucken Guppies.”
They are very narcissistic. They feel that gangstas conger all. No man is smarter than they are.
I feel that this particular group is very artistic. They are truly great actors. I still have to admit I like the group. I can see where they are coming from. It’s like a dog eat dog world, they feel that they have to do what they have to do in order to survive. They also live life by the seat of their pants, always breaking the law and yet slipping through the cracks of justice. It’s a dangerous lifestyle that they are conveying. They are trying to put themselves out there like they simply cannot be beat.
The most striking lyric to me is,” They probably grow weed in the garden of Eden.” That is appalling and the record company should have excluded those lyrics from the song. I understand that some groups feel that they need to promote Weed, which is bad in itself. It is horrific to think about weed in the Garden of Eden.
I never knew Ice Cube was not a gangster. Is Ice Cube a stage gangster as you might say? That caught me by surprise. I just thought they were all pretty much gangsters, but as you say, they are very good actors. So whether the lyrics that they are singing are just some lines they came up with versus what they actually experienced in life would be a good question for them, I would think. Wow, I am still tripping out, thanks for pointing that out I guess. You know, I think Snoop Doggy Dog was really a gangster; he was from the Crypts, I think. I guess when you are a rap artist, you tend to put on an act and become this persona on stage to make it look good and to sell your albums. But while they compose and sing these songs, as you listen you can tend to relate in some ways. You are like, wow, this guy knows what he is talking about, and I guess you throw the rest out the window. But as I have noticed with some of the lyrics, they can sometimes tend to make themselves seem higher than God and above the law. The images they sometimes portray are way too descriptive. I have avoided listening to rap music because of the violence the lyrics describe.
ReplyDeleteI found it very interesting what you wrote this time. I think you are a brave person that despite the difficult times in which you could've found, you faced them. You know, I have planned to be a foster mom, and I hope to be a very good one and that the passing of the years the children who can I raise, I want they love me as much as their true mother. I think that things always happen for a reason. Maybe this is not the same way I used to think of when I was a teenager but it is probably life teaches us new things every day. Perhaps you had to experience that feeling of sharing your emotions and experiences with people who were going through the same things On this kind of music, I actually I do not know much about it and all I could say is about music videos that I watched and I really dislike the language used to convey the message . Definitely, I consider this is not music of my adolescent time, however, like everything else in life there are two versions and yours for example you see this stream music from a different perspective to mine maybe for your life experiences.
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