Danny Brown
A three-part posse-cut style flex track (featuring Ab-Soul and Kendrick Lamar on the full version, though only Danny Brown's…
success and its authenticity hedonism as armor class ascension from poverty
Emmylou Harris
Emmylou Harris narrates the entire life of a childhood friend from rural Alabama, from adolescence to an early, unremarked…
rural poverty thwarted ambition female friendship
Wu‐Tang Clan
Two verses from Raekwon and Inspectah Deck lay out parallel autobiographies of poverty, hustling, and incarceration in…
economic desperation and survival the school-to-prison pipeline urban poverty in New York
Uncle Tupelo
A grim, working-class dirge about exhaustion and dead ends, delivered in the voice of someone addressing a person on the verge…
industrial despair class fatigue futility versus endurance
Minutemen
A terse, two-minute political sketch that moves from a stark statement about poverty and inherited injustice to a small, almost…
economic inequality inherited guilt survival
Pet Shop Boys
A cold, hypnotic portrait of London's class and consumer divide, delivered in a near-rap monotone over a synth-pop groove. The…
class division urban alienation consumption and desire
Kanye West Tribute Band
A Ray Charles sample and a party-ready hook frame a much darker set of verses about money, sex, race, and resentment between men…
gender and money distrust and betrayal black masculinity and provider anxiety
Bob Dylan
A six-minute takedown song that watches a once-privileged woman lose every social prop that made her feel untouchable. Dylan…
fall from privilege social exposure and humiliation freedom through loss
Fairport Convention
This is the Fairport Convention electric-folk arrangement of the ancient English/Scottish ballad about adultery, betrayal, and…
class inequality adultery and its consequences honor and vengeance
Johnny Cash
A first-person prison lament in which the narrator, confined and hopeless, is tormented by the sound of a train he cannot board.…
confinement and freedom guilt and moral consequence class resentment
Vampire Weekend
A jaunty, harpsichord-inflected pop song that uses a grammar joke as a launching pad for a satire of upper-crust pretension and…
class and privilege cultural tourism and appropriation linguistic pedantry vs authenticity
Jimi Hendrix
This is Hendrix's take on a blues standard about fatalism and hard luck, stripped down to a single circling complaint. The song…
fatalism poverty and hardship isolation
Leonard Cohen
A meditation on grace and surrender disguised as a portrait of a woman by a river, Cohen's song moves from intimate seduction…
spiritual longing disguised as romance the sacred in the everyday trust and surrender