Results for “hustling versus artistic destiny”

Songs

1970 Somethin'

The Notorious B.I.G.

This posthumously released Biggie track builds a fictionalized autobiography from birth to incarceration, framing it as origin…

mythologized origin story street life and survival mortality and alternate futures

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

Dirty Laundry

Danny Brown

Danny Brown turns a mundane household chore into a running double entendre for sexual and criminal grime, stacking…

sexual degradation as comedy poverty and hustling shame versus exposure

Eple

Röyksopp

The lyrics supplied here do not match the actual song: Röyksopp's "Eple" is a well-known instrumental track from Melody A.M.…

mortality artistic camaraderie nostalgia

Africa

Weezer

This is Weezer's note-for-note cover of Toto's 1982 hit, so the words themselves are unchanged; what shifts is the frame. Sung…

longing and distance exoticized landscape as metaphor devotion versus escape

You've Got a Friend In Me

Randy Newman

A jaunty, unguarded pledge of loyalty written for the Toy Story soundtrack, sung in the voice of a companion (originally Woody,…

loyalty friendship as identity reassurance in the face of fear

100%

Sonic Youth

A tribute song built from fragments of grief, aggression, and dark humor, written in memory of a scene figure lost to violence.…

violent death and its aftermath rock scene mythology and idolization gender and predation within a music subculture

Sexy Boy

Air

A woozy, vocoder-warped taunt built almost entirely out of one phrase, "Sexy Boy" pokes at masculine vanity and celebrity…

vanity and self-image celebrity and consumerism irony versus seduction

Wild Fire

Laura Marling

Laura Marling narrates from the outside of a relationship, watching a woman she's fascinated by perform for others while…

watching versus being seen inherited family damage artistic self-consciousness

Outdoor Miner

Wire

A deceptively sweet pop song from a band known for angular art-punk, built around the tiny natural phenomenon of a leaf-mining…

nature observation hiddenness and exposure innocence versus threat

Only This Moment

Röyksopp

A minimalist electro-pop meditation on love as a present-tense gamble, oscillating between dread that a relationship is doomed…

uncertainty in love presentism versus fear of the future doubt and surrender

Water Curses

Animal Collective

A dreamlike wish-song built around water as an image of fluidity, ease, and self-erasure, drifting through loosely connected…

desire for formlessness/transformation mortality and impermanence creativity and artistic longing

Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)

De La Soul

De La Soul turns their own answering machine into a comic stage set, using its looping outgoing message as a chorus to frame a…

fame and its unwanted attention the hip-hop demo-tape hustle authenticity versus hype

All That You Have Is Your Soul

Emmylou Harris

A mother's warning becomes a hard-won personal confession, as the narrator traces her own failures to heed advice about…

inherited wisdom moral compromise self-possession versus loss of self

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

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

Changes

David Bowie

A restless self-portrait of an artist who treats identity as provisional, staged against a generational standoff between an…

self-reinvention generational conflict impermanence

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

So Low

Talib Kweli

Talib Kweli uses the physical sensation of depth—gravity, fire, ice, the ocean floor—as a metaphor for both emotional lows and…

authenticity vs. celebrity struggle and resilience artistic integrity

Dance

Danny Brown

This is a brief, high-energy verse opener in which Danny Brown reasserts his work ethic and local identity, framing his hustle…

hustle and ambition regional pride self-mythologizing

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

Country Cousins

Talib Kweli

A track built around regional hip-hop kinship, tracing how a Brooklyn upbringing steeped in New York rap culture connects…

regional identity in hip-hop cultural kinship and slang as connective tissue coming-of-age through music

Oooh.

De La Soul

A posse-cut braggadocio track from De La Soul's Art Official Intelligence era, featuring Redman on hooks and ad-libs while Pos…

lyrical supremacy authenticity vs. commercialism hustle and survival

Rings

Aesop Rock

Aesop Rock revisits his abandoned career as a visual artist, tracing how technical devotion to drawing and painting curdled into…

creative identity and its loss depression and self-sabotage artistic craft and obsession

Caravan

Rush

This is Rush's return single after a long studio absence, framing a young protagonist's journey toward the city as both a…

ambition versus smallness escape from the past movement and forward motion

JU$T

Run the Jewels

JU$T is a dense indictment of American capitalism's continuity with slavery, arguing that legal freedom masks economic and…

capitalism as slavery's successor racial oppression and complicity hustle and survival economics

I Need a Doctor

Dr. Dre

A collaborative single built as a plea from Eminem to Dr. Dre, using the frame of medical crisis to dramatize creative and…

mentorship and debt creative block and self-doubt loyalty versus betrayal

You and I

Betty Davis

A slow, confessional ballad in which Betty Davis strips away the funk-rock swagger of her usual persona to admit vulnerability…

emotional vulnerability the gap between maturity and desire dependency versus independence

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

Childs Play

SZA

SZA uses the imagery of childhood games—Barbies, video games, playground toys—to talk about growing into a sexual and emotional…

coming of age sexual awakening nostalgia

Foolish Heart

Alison Krauss

A young narrator rehearses her own exit from a doomed relationship, arguing herself into leaving before she can be hurt again.…

self-protection versus vulnerability romantic disillusionment pride as armor

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

I Shall Not Be Moved

Public Enemy

Chuck D uses the title of an old gospel/civil-rights standard as a manifesto for artistic and political endurance, framing…

longevity and refusal to be silenced corporate control of music and media racial injustice and neglect of the poor

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

Ft. Worth Blues

Steve Earle

Steve Earle's tribute to a departed friend (widely understood as Townes Van Zandt) turns a travelogue into an elegy, mapping…

grief and mourning itinerancy and homelessness artistic legacy

Sharp Cutting Wings (Song to a Poet)

Lucinda Williams

An early Lucinda Williams ballad addressed to an idealized poet-lover, mixing plainspoken country-blues devotion with a fantasy…

idealized love escapism artistic admiration

Gold Star for Robot Boy

Guided by Voices

A short, riff-driven track from Bee Thousand that turns self-reliance into a kind of mechanical badge of honor. The narrator…

self-determination irony toward achievement/reward systems artistic autonomy

Painted on Canvas

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter builds an extended metaphor comparing human identity to a painted canvas, where upbringing, community, and chance…

identity formation agency vs. determinism artistic lineage

You Know My Steez

Gang Starr

This is a straight-up hip-hop statement of purpose: Guru surveys a rap landscape he considers watered down and reasserts Gang…

artistic integrity authenticity vs. commercialism spiritual/moral authority

The Story

Brandi Carlile

Brandi Carlile's title track builds a life's worth of scars and travels into a single argument: experience is meaningless…

intimacy as validation hidden suffering behind a public self devotion and destiny