Results for “street violence as credential”

Songs

Street Struck

Big L

Big L delivers a first-person cautionary account of Harlem street life, warning listeners against the seductive pull of drug…

street violence and its consequences the lure of fast money wasted talent and lost potential

Out In the Street

Bruce Springsteen

A dockworker counts down the hours of a punishing week toward the one place that restores his sense of self: the sidewalk and…

working-class pride community solidarity surveillance and police presence

In the Street

Big Star

A deceptively simple slice of teenage boredom set to a chiming, anthemic riff, this song turns the aimlessness of small-town…

teenage boredom small-town aimlessness friendship

Mean Street

Van Halen

Mean Street is a portrait of urban confinement rendered as both trap and identity, opening Fair Warning with a bleak,…

urban poverty desperation and survival belonging despite hardship

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

Quiet Storm Remix

Mobb Deep

A hardcore posse cut in which Prodigy and Havoc trade verses built on threat, street pedigree, and blunt boasting about their…

street violence as credential hip-hop as drug/addiction metaphor hardened survival and fatalism

Street Halo

Burial

Street Halo strips vocal content down to a handful of phrases looped and smeared into near-abstraction, functioning less as…

isolation yearning urban nocturne

Lonesome Street

Blur

Lonesome Street opens The Magic Whip as a jittery, half-comic portrait of consumerist drift and quiet alienation, filtered…

consumerism and mass production alienation and loneliness commuting/suburban routine

Street Dreams

Nas

This is Nas mapping the mythology of the drug trade from the inside, tracking a narrator's rise through dealing, the trappings…

the drug economy as a distorted American dream inevitability and fatalism in ghetto life materialism as compensation for scarcity

Boogie Street

Leonard Cohen

A meditation on the pull between transcendent, near-mystical intimacy and the noisy, transactional churn of ordinary life. The…

sacred vs. profane transience of ecstasy spiritual longing

Streets of Baltimore

Gram Parsons

A countrypolitan narrative song told by a man who uproots his life to satisfy his wife's craving for city glamour, only to watch…

rural-to-urban displacement the limits of sacrifice gendered domestic roles

Street Flash

Animal Collective

A song about the paralysis of anxious self-consciousness and the small, almost accidental relief of stepping outside. It moves…

anxiety and self-criticism domestic clutter as psychological weight inertia versus movement

Fascination Street

The Cure

A pulsing invitation to a night of self-destructive escape, dressed as seduction but shot through with dread and disgust. The…

compulsion and addiction toxic intimacy escapism

Scott Street

Phoebe Bridgers

A wandering walk through a familiar neighborhood becomes an occasion for reckoning with a lapsed relationship, as the narrator…

awkward reunion emotional numbness nostalgia and aging

m.A.A.d city

Kendrick Lamar

A two-part suite that reconstructs Kendrick Lamar's adolescence in Compton as a series of near-misses and moral compromises,…

gang violence and territorial identity childhood exposure to trauma survivor's guilt and moral compromise

Theme from M*A*S*H (Suicide Is Painless)

Manic Street Preachers

This is a cover of the theme song written for the film and TV series M*A*S*H, originally penned as a deliberately bad, deadpan…

fatalism detachment from mortality irony versus sincerity

Bells of War

Wu‐Tang Clan

A posse cut from Wu-Tang's late-90s peak that stacks dense, image-heavy verses from multiple MCs into a single show of…

group supremacy and dominance street violence as metaphor for lyrical combat Five Percenter/Nation of Gods and Earths philosophy

Straight Gutta

Method Man

A hardcore posse cut built on street-warfare imagery and reputation-building, with Method Man and his collaborators trading…

street violence reputation and dominance survival codes/superstition

Motorcycle Emptiness

Manic Street Preachers

A relentless indictment of consumer culture set against a soaring, almost stadium-rock melody, the song stages a war between its…

consumerism alienation cultural decay

Tearz

Wu‐Tang Clan

A grim, cautionary storytelling track built around two narrated tragedies -- a child's death from a street robbery and a…

mortality street violence consequence of recklessness

Older Gods

Wu‐Tang Clan

This is a dense, multi-voiced Wu-Tang posse cut built almost entirely from boast and threat, stitched together by rapid-fire…

street mythology and reputation material excess as armor violence as currency

Get Down

Nas

Nas narrates a series of street-life anecdotes and near-death encounters spanning decades of New York and West Coast gang…

cycles of violence street mythology and legacy fatalism vs. moral awakening

Can It Be All So Simple / Intermission

Wu‐Tang Clan

This Raekwon and Ghostface Killah cut turns Nas's soul-sample nostalgia formula inside out, using a hazy "remember when" hook to…

street violence and its costs nostalgia versus reality material aspiration and escape

Punks Jump Up to Get the Beat Down

Brand Nubian

A boastful, violence-glorifying posse track built around a call-and-response hook, in which each MC takes a turn narrating…

street violence and retaliation masculine posturing reputation and respect

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

Nas Is Like

Nas

Built on a DJ Premier loop and a simile-driven hook, this track is Nas's attempt to define his own mythology by analogy,…

self-mythology survival amid violence fame and mortality

Billy Jack

Curtis Mayfield

A street-corner elegy for a man killed in a shooting, told through the flat, almost gossipy report of a friend passing along…

urban violence respectability and street reputation community versus individualism

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

Behind Bars

Slick Rick

Slick Rick delivers a first-person account of incarceration that trades his usual playful storytelling voice for something…

incarceration and confinement violence and survival extortion and hierarchy

Hold Ya Head

The Notorious B.I.G.

This is Biggie's bleakest first-person confession, a suicidal monologue framed by a mournful sample of a mother grieving her…

suicidal ideation self-loathing street violence and its aftermath

Point Seen Money Gone

Snoop Dogg

A hedonistic travel-and-flex track built around the refrain that loyalty follows money, not the other way around. Snoop and…

material excess transactional relationships travel and escapism

Shook Ones, Pt. II

Mobb Deep

A menacing first-person address from a Queensbridge narrator to a rival or interloper, built almost entirely as a threat and a…

street violence and survival authenticity vs. posturing fatalism and mortality

Rite Where U Stand

Gang Starr

A hardcore posse-style threat track built around a single refrain of lethal finality: cross the speaker and you get dropped…

street violence and retaliation rap dominance/legacy industry exploitation

squabble up

Kendrick Lamar

A high-velocity West Coast flex track that turns a slang term for confrontation into a chant, stacking boasts about money, sex…

street credibility and violence wealth and material excess authenticity vs. performance in rap

Let Me Ride

Dr. Dre

A West Coast G-funk cruising anthem that stitches together threats of violence, sexual boasting, and neighborhood pride into a…

street violence and retaliation gangsta identity and reputation Los Angeles car culture

One

Ghostface Killah

This is Ghostface Killah at his most free-associative: a barrage of surreal imagery, street reportage, pop-culture references,…

street life and violence hedonism and sexual boasting urban decay and social critique

The Message

Nas

Nas stitches together two dense verses of violent, luxury-drenched bravado and a grim first-person shooting narrative, unified…

vigilance and mortality street violence and retaliation loyalty and betrayal

Iron Galaxy

Cannibal Ox

Iron Galaxy fuses two verses from Vordul Mega and Vast Aire into a single portrait of Harlem as both a war zone and a machine…

urban survival dehumanization poverty and violence

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

Party and Bulls**t

The Notorious B.I.G.

Biggie's debut single is a snapshot of Brooklyn nightlife rendered with documentary precision: the party is inseparable from the…

street life as routine violence normalized within leisure masculinity and reputation