The most interesting part
of this week’s reading that sticks out to me the most is how they speak about
mixtapes as if it is the hand that feeds them. Music has always been an important
part of African American culture and the idea of mixtapes have always driven
music to evolve and change. A quote from this week’s readings says, “for
African Americans, life is not an open book but a talking one. Not in the sense
of being “books on tape,” nor even the African slave’s powerful idea of the “talking
book,” but rather, a mixtape…” (Young, Pg.1). Life being a talking book for African
Americans shows the basic importance that music had to that culture. Being an
African American myself I can proudly say that music is a big part of our
culture and you can see it to this day. Whether you look at the ties music to
the sports we play or how Hip-Hop and R&B have stemmed from our culture. If
you take a step back in time to say the 90’s you can see how much hip-hop/rap
has evolved and changed based on our culture. Music has such a relation to life
because people like to share their stories through music. These stories inside
of songs have helped to carry our culture along throughout history and has
helped us keep our history alive to this day. Personally, music has a big part
in my life because I love listening to music and knowing the importance of it
is just as important as say knowing the lyrics.
The songs I chose are:
Boyz-n-the-hood by N.W.A
Brenda’s Got A Baby by Tupac
Shakur
The connection between
these songs and the reading is that they both are songs that spoke about the lifestyle
and hardships within our culture of being an African American in America. I grew
up listening to these songs and they both have deep meaning behind the words. Both
songs came off of these artists first couple of mixtapes which proves that
mixtapes have a significance within the music industry. The Tupac song mentions
mixtapes within the song which is cool. The N.W.A. song does not but the
lifestyle they speak of is sort of a reference to making mixtapes and selling them.
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