Inner City Blues- Marvin Gaye

Inner City Blues by Marvin Gaye provides a glimpse of what inner city clinging looked like back in 1971. Marvin Gaye was born in 1939 and contributed heavily to the music industry in the ’60s until his earthly departure in 1984. Within the first few verses of the song, Marvin expresses how ” money, we make it before we see it, you take it, he then bridges into the chorus reveling how the current circumstances make [him] wanna holler the way they do [ his] life this ain’t living…” Gaye is exclaiming some of the issues he has in The United States, he feels like the money the working class makes is all going back to the government in taxes. He discusses inflation, which is an issue in our world today. The cost of grass has not been under $2.50 since 2017, and the minimum wages have remained the same for decades with only a handful of states raising theirs. ” no chance to increase finance bills pile up sky high Send that boy off to die”. During the 19th century, America was in its share of wars and wars cost money, jobs were hard to come across and every young man of the age of 18 had to declare for the draft. There was still an unexplainable amount of “trigger-happy policing” wiping away minorities specifically African Americans. The War On Drugs began in June of 1971, and the police were going above and beyond to make sure drugs were not on the streets, the only downside to this was they targeted low-income and minority-dominated neighborhoods. In the Outro Marvin states “… they don’t understand”, The majority of the working class feels like their voices are not heard and it is hard to reach those with power because they can not relate to the struggles of the common man. This song demonstrates another perspective with someone agreeing that certain qualities of the American dream are inaccessible if you don’t have certain characteristics.