Song Analysis Of 'The Water' By Mick Jenkins
In today’s generation, music can be exposed to any listener. It is not like the mid 60’s, when The Beatles were banned from major radio stations and even countries! Now music can be as political and diverse as an artist wants. Unfortunately music is degrading in quality, but today, situations such as poverty, involvement of hard work and everyday life situations are being heard more of in music. Although music is making a negative impact, one of the albums that I highly respect in the underground scene that states all these problems is “The Water[s]”. This is an album composed by a rebellious artist named, “Mick Jenkins”. This album shows all the social problems in a different perspective, that our generation find highly offensive. Aside from making such popular topics being heard, “Mick Jenkins” is well involved with today’s generation due to his age and life status. Jayson Jenkins, better known for his stage name “Mick Jenkins“ is a rapper from Huntsville, Alabama. At age 20, after being part of a club in college of creative writers, he dropped out and moved to Chicago. Soon after he competed in a rap competition called, “
…show more content…
Who Got Bars?”, where he met other artist and took advantage to make two projects before he presented his mixtape”The Water[s]” in late 2014. Lyrics from the song “The Waters”, such as “When the rain don’t fall so hard no more. And the bank won’t take my card no more.” provides examples of what real poverty is in today’s society. No matter where you live, being empty pocket is a struggle. But even if these are problems in our generation, “Mick Jenkins” uses his life status as an advantage to directly explain what is wrong. As shown in “The Waters”, positive views are also intended in poverty. Like the line “ Water more important than the gold” and “People do it for the gold, people save your soul” show that even if a person is in a bad situation, they can always look back to the real importance. Providing sufficient evidence that life is made mostly of water and are always going to need water for survival, rather than the gold. Strong work is always shown in dedicated artist.
In the album the song “Black Sheep” shows how degrading hard workers can be a mistake. In the opening lines “Young Mozarts with more keys, black sheep with a gang of wolves before me” shows the relation of his talent and perseverance, such like Mozart’s because no one believed he would become a great pianist. Another example of such hard work is the complexity he uses is in the last line “ Black sheep, but I know you see the GOAT in me”. This is what makes the song so hardworking and no exemption for other artist to slack off. He uses the black sheep as a symbol for the starters in anything, which for him is the rap game. Then after that he uses an acronym in GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) to point out that no slacking is allowed if you are trying to compete against hard workers like
him. Putting these two traits aside, the most potential problem that is used in music today is the everyday situations. This is well polished in the song “Martyrs”. You can tell a lot from the name before starting the song. This was a correct way to use this word, which is defined as someone who would die or will kill for their beliefs. He proves the fact that music today is full of lies but share the power of martyrs. In the song, the line “All these little ni**as carry guns now, and they carry them to the fucking beat” signifies that todays music influences lies. These lies include drugs, shoot outs, and power making little kids establish an impersonation that results in death, or as “Mick Jenkins” says “Aiming to high to leave the lows, Hang to high to see the lows”. Another national problem which is not really relevant to anyone in America is child prostitution and the lost of virginity at a young age. In the line “All these little girls give it up now, shame I could see the cherry stems in the fucking streets” it shows that it starts out as a game of sex. This in seconds turns to “cherry stems” (virginity) being in the “streets”. As a whole the album “The Water[s]” can be rated as a 9/10. Reference of everyday events, well developed work, and poverty make the album a perfect piece of art to be out at this time in our life. Not only because rap is a great hit, but the relevant facts that news feeds the viewers is not always heard by the whole community. This gives the younger age a chance to hear what is really happening in our society and to influence them to open their eyes.
Who Got Bars?”, where he met other artist and took advantage to make two projects before he presented his mixtape”The Water[s]” in late 2014. Lyrics from the song “The Waters”, such as “When the rain don’t fall so hard no more. And the bank won’t take my card no more.” provides examples of what real poverty is in today’s society. No matter where you live, being empty pocket is a struggle. But even if these are problems in our generation, “Mick Jenkins” uses his life status as an advantage to directly explain what is wrong. As shown in “The Waters”, positive views are also intended in poverty. Like the line “ Water more important than the gold” and “People do it for the gold, people save your soul” show that even if a person is in a bad situation, they can always look back to the real importance. Providing sufficient evidence that life is made mostly of water and are always going to need water for survival, rather than the gold. Strong work is always shown in dedicated artist.
In the album the song “Black Sheep” shows how degrading hard workers can be a mistake. In the opening lines “Young Mozarts with more keys, black sheep with a gang of wolves before me” shows the relation of his talent and perseverance, such like Mozart’s because no one believed he would become a great pianist. Another example of such hard work is the complexity he uses is in the last line “ Black sheep, but I know you see the GOAT in me”. This is what makes the song so hardworking and no exemption for other artist to slack off. He uses the black sheep as a symbol for the starters in anything, which for him is the rap game. Then after that he uses an acronym in GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) to point out that no slacking is allowed if you are trying to compete against hard workers like
him. Putting these two traits aside, the most potential problem that is used in music today is the everyday situations. This is well polished in the song “Martyrs”. You can tell a lot from the name before starting the song. This was a correct way to use this word, which is defined as someone who would die or will kill for their beliefs. He proves the fact that music today is full of lies but share the power of martyrs. In the song, the line “All these little ni**as carry guns now, and they carry them to the fucking beat” signifies that todays music influences lies. These lies include drugs, shoot outs, and power making little kids establish an impersonation that results in death, or as “Mick Jenkins” says “Aiming to high to leave the lows, Hang to high to see the lows”. Another national problem which is not really relevant to anyone in America is child prostitution and the lost of virginity at a young age. In the line “All these little girls give it up now, shame I could see the cherry stems in the fucking streets” it shows that it starts out as a game of sex. This in seconds turns to “cherry stems” (virginity) being in the “streets”. As a whole the album “The Water[s]” can be rated as a 9/10. Reference of everyday events, well developed work, and poverty make the album a perfect piece of art to be out at this time in our life. Not only because rap is a great hit, but the relevant facts that news feeds the viewers is not always heard by the whole community. This gives the younger age a chance to hear what is really happening in our society and to influence them to open their eyes.