Results for “commercial hustle”

Songs

Keep Their Heads Ringin'

Dr. Dre

A party-rap flex from the Friday soundtrack in which Dr. Dre spends three verses establishing his sonic and physical dominance…

braggadocio sonic dominance party/hangout culture

Nights

Frank Ocean

A two-part song that splits itself at its own midpoint, moving from a hazy, drug-fogged meditation on isolation and hustling…

isolation within closeness hustle and survival memory and nostalgia

What They Do

The Roots

A mid-90s Roots track built around a single defiant refrain, positioning the group's artistic integrity against a hip-hop…

authenticity vs. commercialism artistic integrity hip-hop lineage and craft

The Seed (2.0)

The Roots

The Roots' reworking of Cody ChesnuTT's song blends literal talk of casual sex and impregnation with a metaphor for musical…

legacy and lineage sex as creative metaphor authenticity vs. commercialism

Listen!!!

Talib Kweli

A hyper-percussive showcase track built almost entirely around the command to "listen," using that word as both hook and thesis:…

attention and distraction authenticity vs. commercial rap self-assertion of skill

Hymn 43

Jethro Tull

A caustic broadside against the American co-option of Christianity, pairing frontier violence and cowboy mythology with the…

religious hypocrisy American mythology and violence colonialism

Paid In Full

Eric B.

This is the title track and origin document of hip-hop's most sampled record, a first-person account of a hustler talking…

hustling and survival redemption through legitimate work the music industry as a means of escape

I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)

Jamie xx

This Jamie xx track builds a euphoric, sample-driven dance anthem around a simple mantra of anticipated joy, then hands the mic…

anticipation and collective release hedonism and excess class and hustle

Raid

Madvillain

"Raid" is a two-verse showcase built around boastful self-mythologizing, with MF Doom opening and MED closing over a woozy,…

outlaw persona and contradiction poverty and hustling reputation and legend-building

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

Cat Power

Cat Power strips the Rolling Stones' garage-rock anthem of its swagger and turns it into something hushed, sad, and almost…

alienation commercial saturation exhaustion

Work It

Missy Elliott

Missy Elliott's signature single is a maximalist celebration of sexual confidence and self-invention, built on a literal sonic…

sexual agency self-invention and reinvention female solidarity and hustle

Monkey Suite

Madvillain

A dense, freewheeling verse from MF Doom that piles up internal rhyme and non-sequitur imagery to sketch a self-portrait through…

identity through negation authenticity vs. costume/disguise street survival and hustling

Wordless Chorus

My Morning Jacket

This opening track from Z announces a stylistic pivot for My Morning Jacket, trading reverb-soaked murk for something clearer…

loss of instinct commercialism vs. authenticity self-reinvention

Still D.R.E.

Dr. Dre

A comeback statement dressed as a boast, in which Dr. Dre answers years of speculation about his relevance by cataloguing…

reputation and legacy authenticity versus commercialism loyalty to origin/streets

Pretty Paper

Willie Nelson

A Christmas song that undercuts its own cheer: a street vendor selling gift-wrap and pencils becomes a fixture the holiday crowd…

isolation amid crowds commercialism vs. compassion invisibility of the poor

Sex, Drugs and Violence

Public Enemy

Public Enemy uses three loosely connected vignettes of unsolved shootings tied to hip-hop culture to indict the industry and…

media complicity violence in hip-hop culture commercialization of black death

Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It

Ice Cube

Ice Cube uses the media's stock accusation that gangsta rap 'causes' violence as a satirical device, exaggerating the charge…

media scapegoating and moral panic authenticity vs commercial gatekeeping black masculinity and self-reliance

Oh No

Mos Def

A posse-cut showcase built around G-funk swagger, "Oh No" pairs Mos Def and Pharoahe Monch trading verses over a Nate Dogg hook,…

hustle and self-made success competitive supremacy coastal unity

Bring It on Home to Me

B.B. King

This is less a song than a spoken monologue set to guitar, in which B.B. King explains his relationship to his guitar, Lucille,…

companionship and loneliness music as confession survival and near-death experience

Above the Clouds

Gang Starr

A cosmic-flight framing device gives way to two verses of dense, mystically-inflected boasting in which Guru and an MC (the…

spiritual elevation vs. street corruption Five Percenter cosmology and self-divinity lyrical supremacy as warfare

Doomsday

MF DOOM

The title track of MF DOOM's debut solo album is both a resurrection and a mission statement. Rapping under a new mask after the…

reinvention through persona mortality and legacy underground rap ethics vs. commercial rap

Love Will Find a Way

Yes

A commercial-rock love song built on hesitation rather than certainty, in which the narrator wavers between wanting closeness…

romantic ambivalence reassurance through repetition emotional confusion

Rosa Parks

OutKast

A brash, funk-driven boast track in which Outkast repurpose a civil-rights phrase as a battle-rap taunt, using the chorus as a…

competition and dominance in hip-hop staying artistically ahead Southern regional pride

Devil's Pie

D'Angelo

D'Angelo indicts the entire economy of vice, greed, and hustle that people line up for, while implicating himself as complicit…

greed and materialism complicity and self-implication spiritual/moral corruption

N.Y. State of Mind

Nas

A dense, almost stream-of-consciousness portrait of Queensbridge street life, delivered with a density of imagery more…

urban survival mortality and insomnia criminal economy

Damaged Goods

Gang of Four

Gang of Four fuse the language of romantic breakup with the language of consumer transactions, treating a relationship like a…

commodification of relationships alienation desire vs. disgust

Christmas In the Room

Sufjan Stevens

A quiet domestic carol that strips Christmas of all its commercial and decorative trappings and relocates the holiday's meaning…

domestic intimacy anti-consumerism presence versus decoration

Pacifics (From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack “N.Y. Is Red Hot")

Digable Planets

Digable Planets turn a Sunday in New York into an extended meditation on rest, community, and creative replenishment, moving…

urban leisure and rest Black cultural inheritance (jazz, literature, hip-hop lineage) community and belonging

Work

Gang Starr

A boastful street-level anthem built around the double meaning of 'work' as both hustle/grind and criminal labor, delivered with…

hustler ethic street surveillance and paranoia status and reputation

We the People....

A Tribe Called Quest

A Tribe Called Quest opens their comeback album with a song that fuses street-level survival talk with a chorus that mimics the…

racism and xenophobia economic precarity media distortion

C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)

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

It Can Happen

Yes

A high-gloss opener to Yes's commercial breakthrough album, this song trades the band's earlier cosmic mysticism for a leaner,…

chance and fate self-deception versus self-repair resilience amid chaos