Coe, Kairi. “Today in Hip-Hop: Spice 1 Drops His Self-Titled Debut Album – XXL .” XXL Mag, 14 Apr. 2018, www.xxlmag.com/today-in-hip-hop-spice-1-debut-album/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2024.
Welcome to the Ghetto by Spice 1 gave the public insight into the conditions and experiences of someone from the ghetto Is suspectable to. He starts the song by talking about some of the things he sees daily in his neighborhood. He talks about dope fiends, police, dead bodies, and how being in this environment, “the streets is a place, you could be swallowed by death”. This line hearts my heart, I saw a video a few weeks ago where there was a yard full of children and someone drove by the house and just opened fire. Luckily none of the children were killed, however, those babies will never forget that experience. Their American dream may not be insane wealth or lavish living, it could be something so much simpler like a safe neighborhood. Spice follows this statement by mentioning how he sees ” fifteen n**gas on the corner” and black men all over “America’s Most Wanted”. He did not sell drugs or gang bang but he, like many people who grew up in that environment, knew numerous people who did, and did it “cause you gotta live”. I find this interesting because American culture has promoted financial prosperity so intensely that people do not care how they get their money these days just as long as they get it. The idea of instant gratification has instilled a “hustler’s mentality” in the collection of people. I see the same mentality presented in Lupsha’s ‘Wiseguys and Suckers’, the author spoke about how children would much rather be out on the street than in the classroom learning. It appears that children don’t desire to make an “honest living”. This is rather unfortunate because success comes at a price, and sometimes a life may be a stake. It also makes me question why we haven’t broken this vicious cycle if we know the sacrifices. However, our society is so fixated on individuality, that many of us have developed the ” it can’t happen to me” kind of mindset, we might explore this in another post. There are still about 2:30-3:00 minutes of the song left but for this post, I wanted to make that comparison(violence in streets/promotion of street life) using those lyrics.