Results for “cyclical poverty and incarceration”

Songs

To Hell With Poverty!

Gang of Four

A tightly wound post-punk anthem that turns economic hardship into a rallying cry, pairing a jagged, funk-inflected groove with…

economic hardship class solidarity escapism as resistance

New World Order

Curtis Mayfield

Recorded after the injuries that left him paralyzed, this is Mayfield's late testament of hope grafted onto hard social…

absent fatherhood and family under economic strain mass political awakening spiritual renewal and forgiveness

Little Child Runnin' Wild

Curtis Mayfield

This is Curtis Mayfield's origin story for the addict who becomes the film's tragic antihero -- a child raised in poverty and…

urban poverty childhood neglect addiction as inheritance

Best Life

Danny Brown

A survival narrative dressed as a celebration anthem, where the hook's carefree repetition masks a hard-won philosophy forged in…

survivor's guilt and gratitude carpe diem under duress poverty and the drug trade

On & On

Erykah Badu

A meditation on spiritual self-possession disguised as a loose, jazzy groove, 'On & On' moves through riddles, numerology, and…

spiritual self-knowledge Afrocentric/Five Percenter theology cyclical time and endurance

Hood Mentality

Ice Cube

Ice Cube adopts a first-person voice steeped in street bravado to expose how the mindset it celebrates is a trap, not a triumph.…

cyclical poverty education vs. street survival celebrity worship and false escape routes

Tell Me What I Don't Know

Danny Brown

A first-person account of coming up as a young drug dealer in Detroit, told with flat, almost bored affect that treats violence,…

cycles of poverty and incarceration desensitization to violence youth and false maturity

Waitin' Round to Die

Townes Van Zandt

An early, stripped-down Townes Van Zandt song told as a first-person litany of ruin — abandonment, drink, a bad romance, a…

fatalism cyclical poverty and violence addiction as companionship

No Shoes

John Lee Hooker

A stark, first-person account of poverty rendered in the repetitive, incantatory style of Delta blues. Hooker strips the song…

poverty desperation fatherhood and helplessness

Telephone Road

Rodney Crowell

This is a nostalgic, sensory-dense portrait of a working-class Houston neighborhood seen through childhood memory. Crowell…

working-class childhood nostalgia place and memory

Mathematics

Mos Def

Mos Def builds a dense, statistics-driven indictment of American racial and economic injustice around the conceit of numbers,…

mass incarceration systemic racism economic inequality

Midnight Special

Lead Belly

A prison work-song built around the recurring image of a train's headlight sweeping across a cell, used as both literal detail…

incarceration longing for freedom surveillance and policing

No Place to Go (You Gonna Wreck My Life)

Howlin’ Wolf

A blues complaint built on the classic AAB stanza, this song traces the slow ruin of a man exploited financially and emotionally…

exploitation in love aging and abandonment betrayal

Break 'Em Off

MF DOOM

This track opens as a boastful battle-rap showcase of dense multisyllabic wordplay before pivoting, in its closing stretch, into…

mortality and violence street mythology vs. religious longing incarceration

Baltimore

Nina Simone

A song-portrait of urban decay, written not by Simone but performed on her 1978 record of the same name, in which a wounded city…

urban decay poverty escape and displacement

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

Millionaire

Chris Stapleton

A plainspoken love song built on a single conceit: material poverty offset entirely by romantic abundance. Stapleton uses the…

love versus material wealth contentment in poverty devotion

Annabelle

Gillian Welch

A tenant farmer's plainspoken account of grinding poverty and the death of a child, delivered with the flat cadence of a hymn.…

rural poverty tenant farming/sharecropping parental love and loss

My Moon My Man

Feist

Feist builds a woozy, circling meditation on emotional instability out of a single central image: an unreliable moon that…

cyclical instability dependency and vulnerability emotional weather/lunar imagery

Illegal Smile

John Prine

A deadpan comic monologue about waking up defeated by ordinary life and reaching for a cheap, illicit pleasure to get through…

escapism paranoia and surveillance poverty and disillusionment

Christmas Is

Run-DMC

Run-DMC repurpose the charity-compilation Christmas song into a pointed piece of social commentary, contrasting the holiday's…

economic inequality charity and obligation commercialized holiday imagery

Crazy Circles

Bad Company

A late-70s Bad Company track that treats life as a fairground ride: cyclical, arbitrary, and indifferent to effort or virtue.…

fate and chance cyclical existence hollowness of success

Recurring

Bonobo

"Recurring" is an instrumental mood piece from Bonobo's Days to Come, built on looping samples, muted percussion, and layered…

repetition memory cyclical time

Why We Thugs

Ice Cube

Ice Cube builds a blunt structural argument: the chorus states a thesis about systemic setup, and the verses supply case studies…

systemic entrapment mass incarceration survival and violence

Money Trees

Kendrick Lamar

A coming-of-age account of hustling in Compton, oscillating between the seductive fantasy of quick money and the grim math of…

poverty and survival the seduction of money violence and its normalization

As Serious As Your Life

Four Tet

An instrumental centerpiece from Four Tet's Rounds, built from looping folk-tinged samples, skittering drum breaks, and a slowly…

cyclical time organic vs. mechanical texture accumulation

Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos

Public Enemy

This live rendition preserves Public Enemy's 1988 prison-break narrative, a first-person fiction about a Black man who refuses…

mass incarceration militant resistance state coercion and the draft

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Joan Baez

A cyclical folk lament that traces flowers into girls, girls into wives, husbands into soldiers, soldiers into graves, and…

war and its cost cyclical futility loss and mourning

Always Returning

Brian Eno

Always Returning is an instrumental piece from Eno's Apollo soundtrack, built around slow, cyclical synthesizer and…

orbit and homecoming technological melancholy cyclical time

Sunshine

Mos Def

Sunshine is a boast track that keeps interrupting itself with warmth, using the gospel-tinged sample of the title phrase to turn…

hip-hop bravado and lineage authenticity vs. commercial pretense spiritual/gospel imagery repurposed as swagger

The Nature

Talib Kweli

Talib Kweli surveys global poverty and violence as symptoms of a single underlying logic he calls 'the nature of the world,'…

poverty and survival spiritual searching media distraction

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

Clarksdale Moan

Son House

This is a plainspoken Delta blues meditation on home -- specifically Clarksdale, Mississippi -- rendered through the traditional…

place and belonging poverty endured with dignity memory and habit

Hear My Train a Comin'

Jimi Hendrix

A blues fantasy of escape, built around the image of a train that will carry the singer away from rejection and poverty into…

escape and departure romantic rejection poverty and social judgment

Come On In My Kitchen

Robert Johnson

A slow, aching invitation built on a repeated refrain about shelter from rain, the song fuses seduction with mourning for a lost…

loss and abandonment sexual invitation as consolation poverty and hard times

Everything Is Everything

Lauryn Hill

A meditation on cyclical change and self-determination that doubles as a virtuosic display of rap craft, this track pairs a…

cyclical change and renewal self-empowerment spiritual/religious syncretism

When It Rain

Danny Brown

A relentless portrait of Detroit street violence set to a hyper-fast, footwork-inspired beat, where the manic tempo and…

urban poverty and survival violence and fatalism addiction as coping mechanism

All of the Lights

Kanye West Tribute Band

A maximalist anthem that fuses celebration with confession, using the image of light in all its forms—stage lights, police…

fame and surveillance guilt and self-justification fatherhood and estrangement

Close Your Eyes (And Count to F**k)

Run the Jewels

A high-velocity posse cut where El-P and Killer Mike trade verses of violent bravado, prison-abolitionist rage, and sexual…

mass incarceration and prison abolition institutional hypocrisy (church, courts, police) hypermasculine bravado and sexual conquest

Call It Stormy Monday

B.B. King

This blues standard (originally T-Bone Walker's) walks through the days of the week to trace a slow accumulation of despair,…

weekly grind/labor loneliness religious supplication