Tupac's "Changes" vs. Obama's "Change we can believe in"
Nov, 13, 2008
Posted byThrough his moving rhetoric and his charisma Barack Obama has conquered the entire world, some German newspapers called him even the world’s president (“Weltpraesident“). But what about the people living in the poor and degenerated areas of the United States? Can Obama’s words follow up with deeds to help improve their living condition and be their president?
Indubitably Obama’s promise of change is easier to realize in foreign affairs (above all after President George W. Bush’s assist, scoring will be easy). As far as concerns internal affairs, Obama stressed in his speeches that his intention was to strengthen and to amplify the American middle class. If people of America’s lower class will not see and feel changes, that is, if a substantial part of it won’t be given the opportunities to rise into the lower middle class, the hope the “wind of change” has blown all over the world will first of all disappear among America’s poor.
If the feeling of hope was wrecked again this would lead to a terribly desperate situation. The first and probably biggest step towards “Changes“, claimed by the rapper Tupac Shakur, has been made though:
“It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other/and although it seems heaven sent/we ain’t ready to see a Black President”
The next step that needs to be made is to give the youth other ways out of the ghetto than the ones Tupac depicts most vividly in his song:
“I 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 and 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
Give crack to the kids who the hell cares one less ugly mouth on the welfare
First ship em dope and let em deal the brothers
Give em guns step back watch em kill each other”
Stealing, dope dealing have to be abbandoned by the youth. Furthermore Tupac urges that it is time for the Black community to make change happen:
“We gotta make a change…
It’s time for us as a people to start makin some changes.
Let’s change the way we eat, let’s change the way we live
And let’s change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn’t working so it’s on us to do
What we gotta do, to survive.”
Even though in this verse Tupac just stated that it is time for Black People to step up and make change happen he ends his song critizing the American system and he indirectly appeals to it for changes:
“And still I see no changes can’t a brother get a little peace
It’s war on the streets and the war in the middle east
Instead of war on poverty they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me
And I ain’t never did a crime I aint have to do”
In Conclusion, the election of Obama has managed to turn some Black People’s justified anger towards the system into hope. If this hope was wrecked, America would be off worse than it was before the arrival of Barack Obama.
Posted in Hip-Hop, Presidential Election 2008, Semantics by |
