Song #1 – Thru It All – Wintertime
Song #2- Cantu – Aminé
Song #3- Target – YBN Cordae
Song #4- Summer Sixteen – Drake
Song #5- Down Below – Roddy Ricch
The five songs that I would have in my personal playlist include Thru It All by Wintertime, Cantu by Aminé, Target by YBN Cordae, Summer Sixteen by Drake and Down Below by Roddy Ricch. These are all songs that I deeply could put on repeat and let them play for hours on loop.
Wintertime is a Florida rapper that started to gain recognition from his SoundCloud in 2017. The beat for his song Thru It All is a chill and relaxed beat. The track was produced by Wintertime in 2015. In the beat, you can hear the use of a piano, light drums, and cymbals. In the lyrics of the song, Wintertime mentions how he is going through it. Going through it all is usually associated with having a hard time. Throughout the lyrics, Wintertime mentions that the only people he has around him supporting him in his hard time is his family. Many of the lyrics state that he just wants to be successful, but he is currently going through a hard time to get past it. The lyrics emphasize that he must is at his lowest point and his so-called friends are not there to support or build him back up but they come around when he’s at a content part. Wintertime notices these traits in his friends and realizes they are not genuinely there for him. I think I am mostly attracted to this song because of the relaxed beat. The beat is a feel-good beat that I can put on if I am feeling content or just want to relax. The lyrics of this song put into perspective the counterfeit people that may be in our lives.
Thru It All is a song that my friends and I must play in the car anytime we’re on our way to any destination. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I would have a different relationship with this song if I had different life experiences. I do believe that the lyrics of the song opened up my perspective of who is really in my life and supporting me. Many people want to eat with you but don’t want to help you prepare the table. I haven’t personally experienced this in my life, but it makes me aware that everyone isn’t my friend. I think many other people also experience this song in a similar way because the lyrics are straightforward and relatable to many people.
The song Cantu is by Aminé and debuted on his second studio album onepointfive in 2018. Cantu was co-produced by Aminé and Pasqué. The track includes digital instruments including guitar, bass, drums. The beat for the song is upbeat and is a feel-good song. The song is named after Cantu, a natural hair brand that many black people use in their natural hair. I listened to this song a lot in the summer. It’s a great song to play when you’re riding around with the windows down because of the bright idealistic sound. The lyrics in the song are centered around the fascination with black hair. The lyrics indicate that when he interacts with white people they are in awe of his natural hair and normally try to touch his hair. He also mentions his encounters with non-black individuals regarding his hair and how they want to pet his hair and ask many questions about his hair type.
This song describes my life because of where I grew up. I lived in a predominantly white area as I was growing up, and have experienced the questions about black hair from my white peers. I never realized the effects that could have when I was younger. My ignorance made me believe that they were simply curious but as I became more educated and started to surround myself with people who look similar to me, I then realized that their fascination for my hair was a form of racial microaggressions. Racial microaggressions are a form of subtle racism. I definitely believe that the experiences that I have been through regarding my hair have shaped how I view this song and that may be the reason why I listen to it in a certain way. Other people most likely have a similar relationship with the song because most black individuals have experienced at least one microaggression toward them in their lifetime.
The song Target by YBN Cordae is featured on the joint YBN mixtape. The mixtape was produced by Take A Daytrip. The beat of the song has a strong bass mixed with drums. This is a song that I normally listen to in the car just on regular days. My friends and I normally listen to it on our way to functions and different places that we go to. This song is a storytelling song about being racially profiled by a police officer. This song resembles the late Eazy E’s 1987 song Boyz-n-the-Hood and pays homage to Jay Z’s 99 problems, but with a more modern approach. The song begins with the reference to the hook of Boyz-n-the-hood starting with ‘cruising in a 64’. 1964 Impala’s became a symbol in the rap community since Eazy E’s track dropped in 1987.
I believe I can relate to this song because as a black individual, we are eight times more likely to be profiled in public than other races. The song goes through a time when YBN Cordae was pulled over by a white police officer. The white police officer proceeded to question YBN Cordae and his friends. The police officer asked to search the vehicle and YBN Cordae tells the officer that he must have a warrant in order to search the vehicle. Although he knows his rights, it was because he did state in the song that they had a half-pound of marijuana and two pistols. In the song, YBN Cordae also states that he was pulled over for doing 60 in a 55. This seems pretty ridiculous to get pulled over for which goes back to the idea of racial profiling. Many can relate to this song because many have been in situations where their race puts a target on their back. Anyone who has been profiled could possibly be thinking of their same experience when hearing the song for the first time.
Summer Sixteen was released by Drake in 2016 following his diss tracks with rapper Meek Mill. This song was produced by 40, Boi-1da and CuBeatz. The beat is an upbeat summer track that includes instruments such as drums and bass. Drake throws slugs during the song to Meek Mill after Mill decided to expose Drake for possibly using a ghostwriter. This song came out during the summer of 2016. Summer of 2016 was one of the best summers that my friends and I had by far.
The song was just a great upbeat song to start off the summer. The song brings great memories of the summer of 2016. The summer of 2016 was filled with heartaches, fun outings, traveling and doing things for the first time. I believe that this song is associated with the positive things that I’ve experienced during 2016. This is definitely a song that I would turn on to relive my moments during 2016. This song creates a subculture for my friends and me, I believe. The use of the song can make my attitude change for the better.
Down Below was released on Feed Tha Streets II by Roddy Ricch in 2018. Down Below was produced by Avedon and Scott Storch. The beginning of the song features a piano, then they add bass and then proceed to add drums. The album Feed Tha Streets II is a sequel to his first studio album Feed Tha Streets in 2017. Feed Tha Streets II was about Roddy Ricch’s fight with depression, his use of lean and how he copes with losing his loved ones. Down Below focuses on Roddy’s life when he was at his lowest. In the song, he mentions that he used to live in the projects and how he started from the bottom. He starts to transition to when he started to come up and make a name for himself. He then mentions that many of his friends are asking for help and he feels the need to help them because he had no one to help him when he was at their state.
My relationship with this song could pertain to my lifestyle and how I was raised. When I was five years old, a hurricane destroyed everything that my family and I had. I can definitely relate to this song because I feel as even though I was just five that it sort of set my family and myself back but we went through the hardships and prospered. I believe that if I didn’t have that experience that I would still be able to emphasize with Roddy Ricch because of the fact that anything could potentially hold us back unexpectedly.
In conclusion, I learned that within myself I tend to tailor toward music that can be related to my personal lifestyle and experiences. The music that I listen to on a daily bases is by these artists that are or were similar positions that I am in right now as I listen to them. Music is all about sharing experiences and letting people feeling a range of emotions from the sound, lyrics, and visuals. The connection between the songs included starting from the bottom or calling others out for their wrongdoing. Although each song has its own personal sound of how they portray their experiences. The experiences are very similar and include the same frustrations within them. Each experience in each song has created an open dialogue for discussion in many groups while also being entertainment that people, such as myself, want and enjoy listening to.
Also, all of my selections were a form of Hip Hop or Rap. Rap and Hip Hop music is known for storytelling and stating political statements through the art of music. This also plays a role in my connection to the music because as a young adult, I haven’t lived all of my life yet but can somehow relate to the same things that adults in different regions of the United States have also faced. This personal playlist reveals things about myself that I wouldn’t have understood unless my thoughts were on the paper as so. I definitely learned that music that is attached to certain points in my life will never get old and I’ll probably tell my kids and grandkids about them one day.