Results for “glamorized crime”

Songs

Lost

Frank Ocean

Told from the perspective of a drug-trafficking boyfriend, "Lost" dresses a story of exploitation and denial in the glossy sound…

complicity and denial glamorized crime exploitation disguised as love

The Hardest Part

Blondie

A heist narrative told through the mechanics and hardware of an armored car robbery rather than through character or motive.…

crime and heist fantasy machinery and industrial imagery greed and money

Affirmative Action

Nas

This is a mafioso-rap posse cut in which Nas, alongside his Firm collaborators, trades the political/street-prophet voice he's…

organized crime as fantasy/roleplay materialism and status display loyalty and betrayal within a crew

Atlantic City

The Band

A small-time narrator in a decaying Atlantic City weighs a desperate, half-criminal solution to his debts against a fragile…

economic desperation organized crime and violence romantic loyalty amid ruin

I Love a Man In a Uniform

Gang of Four

A first-person portrait of a man who joins the military not out of conviction but as a solution to unemployment, lost…

militarism as consumer choice economic desperation masculinity and self-worth

Say No Go

De La Soul

De La Soul takes on the crack epidemic of the late 1980s not through gritty street reportage but through wordplay, sampling, and…

addiction and its generational cost complicity versus resistance community warning and moral instruction

People Say

Wu‐Tang Clan

This is a posse-cut style Wu-Tang track where multiple MCs trade dense, boastful verses about street history, criminal résumé,…

street survival and generational crime materialism and excess lyrical supremacy/battle rap bravado

Theme from "the Dukes of Hazzard (Good Ol' Boys)"

Waylon Jennings

This is a theme song that doubles as a character sketch and a wink at its own singer, framing rural outlaws as harmless folk…

rural outlaw mythology folk-hero framing of crime Southern identity and pride

I'm Sticking With You

The Velvet Underground

A deceptively childlike singsong from Moe Tucker turns into an odd meditation on loyalty without limits, where devotion to a…

unconditional loyalty childlike innocence vs. danger identity merging with another

Live Oak

Jason Isbell

A murder ballad disguised as a confession of self-improvement, in which the narrator's claim to have left his violent past…

duality of self violence and love intertwined addiction as haunting past self

Evil

Interpol

A murky, incantatory song built around two women's names -- Rosemary and Sandy -- that Interpol never fully reconciles into a…

complicity and denial seduction as manipulation guilt and judgment

X Offender

Blondie

Blondie's debut single reframes a streetwalker's infatuation with a police officer as a giddy crime narrative, blurring the…

desire as transgression policing and power irony of legal language repurposed as romance

Watching the Detectives

Elvis Costello

A jealous, media-poisoned narrator watches a woman who watches TV crime dramas, and the two kinds of watching collapse into each…

voyeurism and media saturation emotional numbness jealousy and control

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

Yankee and the Brave (ep. 4)

Run the Jewels

This interlude-style track opens RTJ4 with a radio-show framing device that quickly gives way to a dense, boastful verse trading…

outlaw persona and mythmaking police violence and self-preservation brotherhood and loyalty

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