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“90210” is the fifth song off Travis Scott’s debut album Rodeo. I already did a blog post about Rodeo as a whole where I talked a little bit about “90210”, but this song is the most introspective song on the album, and maybe Scott’s most introspective song ever.

The song is divided into two parts, and the second part is the one I’m going to talk about. It’s about how he feels like he’s finally achieved his goals in life. He starts by rapping about his family and how proud they are of him now. According to Scott, his parents opposed the idea of him pursuing music originally, but now they are proud of him. He says that he’s found his life’s meaning in the process. He’s wealthy and on top of the rap game and feels as if nothing can stop him.

I feel like this song perfectly captures the ideal American Dream. Though he is initially doubted by everyone, even his own parents, he is able to achieve his goals through hard work. The song serves as a symbol of hope. Even if it is really difficult and there are barriers along the way, your dreams are never entirely out of reach.

Works Cited

• Lamar, Kendrick. “The Blacker The Berry”. To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2015. Spotify app
• Lamar, Kendrick. “u”. To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2015. Spotify app
• Lamar, Kendrick. “How Much a Dollar Cost”. To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2015. Spotify app
• Lamar, Kendrick. “Wesley’s Theory”. To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2015. Spotify app
• Lamar, Kendrick. “Institutionalized”. To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2015. Spotify app
• Lamar, Kendrick. “King Kunta”. To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2015. Spotify app
• Lamar, Kendrick. “You Ain’t Gotta Lie (Momma Said)”. To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2015. Spotify app
• Lamar, Kendrick. “Complexion (A Zulu Love)”. To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2015. Spotify app
• Lamar, Kendrick. “i”. To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2015. Spotify app
• Lamar, Kendrick. “Alright”. To Pimp a Butterfly, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2015. Spotify app
• Harris, Aisha. “Is Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’ the New Black National Anthem?” Slate Magazine, The Slate Group, 3 Aug. 2015, slate.com/culture/2015/08/black-lives-matter-protesters-chant-kendrick-lamars-alright-what-makes-it-the-perfect-protest-song-video.html.
• Williams, Stereo. “Who Exactly Is Kendrick Lamar Raging against in ‘The Blacker the Berry?’” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 14 Apr. 2017, www.thedailybeast.com/who-exactly-is-kendrick-lamar-raging-against-in-the-blacker-the-berry.
• Markman, Rob. “Kendrick Lamar Still Feels Anger & Hatred on ‘The Blacker the Berry.’” MTV, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwXlimryKJM&ab_channel=MTV. Accessed 2015

Works Consulted

Mooney, Brian. Breakbeat Pedagogy Hip-Hop and Spoken Word beyond the Classroom Walls. Peter Lang, 2016.

Vandagriff, Rachel. Talking about a Revolution: Protest Music and Popular Culture, from Selma, Alabama, to Ferguson, Missouri. Zentrum Für Populäre Kultur Und Musik, 2015.

Craig, Todd. Open Season 2015: Hip-Hop’s Responsibility in Civil Rights Lost, 2015.

1. “The Message” – Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
2. “Express Yourself” – N.W.A
3. “Straight Outta Compton” – N.W.A
4. “Trapped” – 2pac
5. “U.N.I.T.Y.” – Queen Latifah
6. “C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)” – Wu-Tang Clan
7. “N.Y. State of Mind” – Nas
8. “Who Shot Ya?” – The Notorious B.I.G.
9. “Starin’ Through my Rear View” – 2Pac
10. “Hit ‘Em Up” – 2Pac
11. “Dead Presidents” – Jay-Z
12. “Politics as Usual” – Jay-Z
13. “Changes” – 2Pac
14. “Lose Yourself” – Eminem
15. “If I Can’t” – 50 Cent
16. “Through the Wire” – Kanye West
17. “All Falls Down” – Kanye West
18. “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” – Kanye West
19. “Hate It or Love it” – The Game & 50 Cent
20. “Empire State of Mind” – Jay-Z & Alicia Keys
21. “Houston Old Head” – A$AP Rocky
22. “good kid” – Kendrick Lamar
23. “m.A.A.d city” – Kendrick Lamar
24. “New Slaves” – Kanye West
25. “A Tale of 2 Citiez” – J Cole
26. “Wesley’s Theory” – Kendrick Lamar
27. “Alright” – Kendrick Lamar
28. “Mortal Man” – Kendrick Lamar
29. “GOOD MORNING AMERIKKKA” – Joey Bada$$
30. “This is America” – Childish Gambino
31. “The Heart Part 5” – Kendrick Lamar

Released in 1980, “Rapper’s Delight” is considered to be the origin of the hip hop genre. Since then, the genre has changed in many ways, with different styles of music being incorporated over time. In 1982, “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash was released, which kickstarted conscious/political rap. Rap quickly became a medium used to detail the struggles of life for poor African Americans. Drugs, violence, and racism, namely police brutality, were topics mentioned by many rappers. This gave rise to gangster rap. While gangster rap has always received harsh criticism for being crass, it allows rappers to point out political injustices that they face in their daily lives. With the rise of gangster rap, many ideas of the American Dream were also promoted. Many rappers rapped about working hard to make it to where they were in life (i.e., upward social mobility). The idea was that if you worked hard enough, you could make it to anywhere in life. Rappers started to flaunt the wealth that they acquired through rap, then rap about that. While rappers continue to rap about these ideas to this day, as time progressed, some of them started to point out the faults in the idea of the hustle and materialism, and by association, the American Dream itself. Around the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, many rappers started to rap about systemic racism in much more detail than before. Political rap started to shift towards all kinds of injustices. Whether it was race, class, the education system, the government, etc., anything that could be used to hold someone down in America faced critique. This led to a shifting perspective on the American Dream in rap; it was no longer about working hard to achieve material success. Rappers also started to open up and talk about mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety. This vulnerability showcases the fact that hard work and material success has not made them feel any better, which flips the American Dream on its head entirely.

I think that from its beginnings to today, rap has changed in a way such that it doesn’t actually have an American Dream anymore; at least, it’s not what we all thought it was. As for the future, I think that as the American Dream continues to be critiqued and denied in rap, there will be rappers who try to completely redefine it. In its current trajectory, it seems like the American Dream in rap will be completely about tearing down the barriers that hold us back and achieving true justice for all.

To Pimp A Butterfly is a rap album by Kendrick Lamar. It’s widely considered one of the greatest rap albums of all time, and for good reason. Lamar combines rap with alternate jazz music in many different parts of the album.

In the album, Lamar discusses the rise to fame in the music industry. More specifically, he details how many rappers are forced to fit into a certain personality/image in order to make it. In the last song on the album, “Mortal Man”, he writes a poem using the image of a caterpillar and a butterfly. The caterpillar is someone just trying to survive in the situation that they’ve been put in. It notices that the world pays no attention to him, but the world praises the butterfly, which represents successful people in general, but in Lamar’s case, successful rappers. This makes the caterpillar want to be like the butterfly, but it’s stuck inside of the cocoon, which represents things that marginalize people, such as school, the government, or the music industry. However, the cocoon is what allows the caterpillar to form its own outlooks on life. It can form its ideas about the cocoon, and as it realizes how bad the cocoon can be for it, it breaks out and transforms into a butterfly.

I feel like this relates to the American Dream heavily because many different parts of American culture require you to fit in with others. However, it is this struggle which causes people to realize flaws within the system, allowing themselves to be more conscious of what’s going on around them. The activism that Lamar preaches in this album reflects a call to improve society and make it more equitable for everyone.

A$AP Rocky is a rapper who was influenced heavily by Houston rap in his music even though he is from Harlem. On his first album, LIVE.LOVE.A$AP, he has a bunch of psychedelic, slow, chill songs reminiscent of Houston, one of them being Houston Old Head. What makes Houston Old Head different from the rest of the songs on the album is how introspective it is compared to the rest.

An “old head” in this context is a mentor who is older and wiser than you. Rocky talks about going to Houston to visit his old head so he can get some advice from him. Rocky vents about how he feels like giving up, but he feels like he can’t because if he stops rapping, he will starve. His old head gives him some basic but powerful advice. He basically tells Rocky that he’s just going through the perils of life, and he would experience these things regardless of what he chose to do.

Later in the song, Rocky’s girlfriend calls him and tells him that he should come back to Harlem, stop buying and dealing drugs, and keep rapping because she knows it’s his true passion, and she wants what’s best for him.

I feel like this song embodies the idea of more of the negative feelings surrounding the American Dream. Even though Rocky’s Dream is to become a famous rapper, he’s struggling to keep himself motivated to get there. He goes to someone who he trusts to ask for advice, and all he gets in return is “that’s just life”. Luckily, Rocky did keep rapping and has made an extremely successful career off of it.

“Time” off of The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd is one of my favorite songs of all time. I first listened to the album on a late night with my dad. “Time” immediately jumped out as my favorite song, and it’s stayed that way since. On its own, it isn’t connected to the American Dream lyrically, and Pink Floyd isn’t an American band either. However, I felt I found a lot of parallels to this song’s lyrics and my own life/life’s journey. It’s about a very common human experience, after all.

Though we always hear that we should make the most of every day, it’s very rare that we waste no time in a day. Humans are stuck in the present, so wasting away one day doesn’t seem like a big deal. These wasted days slowly add up, “and then one day you find [that] ten years have got behind you / No one told you when to run / You missed the starting gun”. In my case, ten years is a little bit extreme, but when I finished high school, I felt like it had passed much more quickly then I expected.

“And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking / Racing around to come up behind you again”. Listening to this song felt like a rude awakening. I know that I’m still young and (hopefully) have plenty of time left in my life, but it felt like if I didn’t make changes in my life as soon as possible, I would end up much further behind than I needed to be.

That’s where the American Dream comes in for me. This song singlehandedly inspired me to stop thinking about my dreams and start actually working towards them. I had spent a lot of time in high school thinking about my future and what I wanted to do, but spent almost no time thinking about how I would actually get there.

The other day, I had some music playing while I was studying. I wasn’t paying too much attention to it at first, until I heard something that piqued my interest:

“It seems we’re living the American Dream / The people highest up got the lowest self esteem.”

After I heard this, I decided to take a deep look into the song’s lyrics to see what I could find. “All Falls Down” is the fourth track on Kanye West’s debut album The College Dropout. I feel like the album as a whole relates to the American Dream; not the idea of a collective American Dream, but each individual’s American Dream. The entire theme of the album can sort of be summed up as “make your own decisions and be your own person”. But this isn’t about the album, it’s about “All Falls Down”.

This song focuses on the ideas of materialism and consumerism that are extremely prevalent in the American Dream. The first verse is about a woman who goes to college, not because she wants to, but because she feels pressured from her parents and society as a whole. She also works as a hairstylist on the side, and she uses that money to buy expensive things, such as “Airs” (Jordan’s). The second verse is about West himself. He raps about how he keeps buying expensive designer clothing, not because he wants them, but because he can brag to others about owning it. The third verse continues by describing the effects of materialism as a whole. He talks about how drug addicts use their money to buy more drugs, and then their drug dealers use that money to buy expensive, materialistic things. By doing so, he points out that the rich CEO earns money in a very harmful way, but doesn’t seem to care.

Rodeo is the debut album of rapper Travis Scott. Many people listen to the album and hear it as just another trap album, but I think it’s much more than that. It’s an album that Scott uses to reflect on his life, but more specifically his journey and rise to stardom. Additionally, it’s sequenced in a way that shows the progression of his life, including the highs and lows along the way.

The first four songs in Rodeo (“Pornography”, “Oh My Dis Side”, “3500”, and “Wasted”, in order) are about Scott’s juvenility. He raps about his upbringing and his childhood ambitions to become a famous rapper. Many of the lyrics in this song highlight his immaturity at this stage of life, where he glorifies drugs, alcohol, and partying. At this point, he shows that his ego was too big, as he doesn’t ever think about the decisions he’s making; he just expects them to work out in his favor.

The next two songs (“90210” and “Pray 4 Love”) mark a turning point in the album. In 90210, he takes a big risk by moving from his hometown Houston to Los Angeles in pursuit of his dreams. He raps about the feelings of homesickness and being lost in the world. Pray 4 Love continues on these themes. He feels humbled after moving, but he recognizes that he has to keep moving forward in his new life.

The next three songs (“Nightcrawler”, “Piss on Your Grave”, and “Antidote”) represent Scott making it big in LA. These songs are basically telling the world that he made it and nothing can stop him, so he embraces the party lifestyle again.

However, after a little bit, he goes back to feeling lost in the next two songs (“Impossible” and “Maria I’m Drunk”). In Impossible, he raps about the negative side of being famous. None of his friends feel genuine, and he can’t find true love because he feels used by everyone. Maria I’m Drunk is similar. He raps about trying to find these things again.

The next song, “Flying High”, goes back to talking about how he achieved his goals of being famous, and he feels euphoric.

Finally, the last two songs (“I Can Tell” and “Apple Pie”) are reflections of his journey and where he wants to go next. He knows he made it, but nostalgia makes him long for the simplicity of his past life. However, he decides that he should keep going on this journey because he feels that he’s destined to.

Overall, I think Rodeo relates to the American Dream in many ways. Firstly, Scott highlights his ambitions and how far he’ll go to achieve them. Secondly, many of the songs touch wealth and materialism. Finally, Scott also talks about the sacrifices and struggles he had to endure to achieve his American Dream.