Stories being told in Music

The tradition of telling stories in songs is apparently making its way down to generations of hip hop artists with rappers like skills and his year “Rap Up” series (Rap up series youtube page.) and Lupe Fiasco who tells stories in most of his songs. This tradition has also seemed to make its way into the television industry like in the show Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The theme song for the show starts off with Will Smith’s line “Now this is a story all about how…” which is a clear indication of storytelling. As the song continues a plot develops with the climax being ‘the couple of guys, that were up to now good, making trouble in the neighborhood’, the turning point being Will moving to his Aunt and Uncle house in Bel-air, concluding  with him ‘sitting on his thrown as the prince of Bel-air’.

We usually come across storytelling in music when we listen to songs with significant messages in them. For instance, the song “Pain in my Life” by Saigon ft. Trey Songz, is a mesh up of different stories that all tied together by the common theme of pain and struggle. Another example of this is the song “I Can” by Nas, which is him telling a children’s story to encourage kids to grow up and make a difference in the world. 

Side Note: As a follow up on what we did in Class on Thursday, I thought it would be interesting to share another story styled song by Slick Rick called children story. In this song Slick Rick took a different approach. He wasn’t bragging about his outrageous day to day life but instead his message was more serious. He spoke about a boy who decided to make some quick cash by robbing people, until he gets shot by the cops.