2) Audition

Talib Kweli Beautiful Struggle

One of the key songs on the album is track 7, “Around My Way,” featuring singer/songwriter, John Legend. The song begins with John Legend singing the chorus. The chorus focuses on the sadness of the hood, as it speaks about “corners filled with sorrow,” and “streets filled with pain.” Since these words are the first descriptive words of the song immediately following the opening repeated line, “Around my way,” the song begins with a sad overtone. The words “sorrow” and “pain” are both negative feelings. Pain is a physical negative while sorrow is an emotional negative. Since a city system is composed mainly of cross hatching streets, joining at corners, this implies that the city is mostly a negative place to live. “All the streets are filled with pain.” At the intersection of pain, lies sorrow, a more abstract pain of the soul. Since pain and sorrow are seemingly ubiquitous in this place described, a tone of loneliness and isolation is presented. Nothing exists except pain, and sorrow, therefore there is nothing to live for. This opening chorus begs the question, why continue living when all that exists is pain and sorrow? For people living in the ghetto, the options are all bad. When one has to choose between pain and sorrow, there is not much to live for.

The Boondocks

Episode 4 of season 1 of “The Boondocks” opens with a scene illustrating the concept of a “Nigga Moment.” The scene opens with a partially cloudy bright sky and closes in towards a cityscape looking over a river with sailboats gliding downstream. There is soft piano music playing in the background that acquires a tambourine beat and a snare at the scene shifts in on a walking stoplight that shifts from red to green. The music and scenery reflect a serene tone of calmness and peace. At the green light, white people begin walking across the street and everything is busy yet still peaceful. Two gangster-looking black males then walk across the street and collide shoulders, knocking the headphones off of one man, and causing the other to drop the object he was holding. Immediately the music stops and the shoulder collision is repeated three times in a row. The atmosphere is no longer peaceful and all sense of calmness has ceased. At this moment when the two black males collide, the scene only focuses on their faces, leaving the rest of the city to the background. There is no peace, no calm, no safety, only the moment that the two men have found themselves caught in. Now that the men are caught in this “Nigga Moment,” they have only two choices back down and lost their respect or kill each other.