- Birdman feat. Lil Wayne & Drake, "Money To Blow", Hip Hop, 2009
- Chris Brown, "Look At Me Now", Hip Hop, 2011
- Trey Songz & Drake, "Successful", R&B, 2010
- DJ. Khaled feat. Diddy, Nicki Minaj, T Pain, Rick Ross, Busta Rhymes, Fabolous, Jadakiss & Fat Joe, "All I Do is Win (Remix)", Hip Hop, 2010
- 50 Cent, "I Get Money", Hip Hop, 2007
- Destiny's Child, "Survivor", R&B, 2001
- Yolanda Adams, "Victory", Gospel, 2005
- R. Kelly, "The Storm is Over Now", R&B, 2000
- Mary J. Blige, "No More Drama", R&B, 2002
- Mary J. Blige, "Enough Cryin", R&B, 2006
I found this week’s blog assignment to be a lot easier than last week’s. The two aims for this week, Worldly success and Liberation, are both prevalent in today’s society. However, I found more songs that related to worldly success than liberation. The main themes for songs that are popular today are, Love, Sex, Money and Alcohol/Drugs. A person is considered successful if they have achieved some sort of status. For example, a person who lives in a mansion, drives in an expensive car, and has earned millions of dollars is considered “to have made it” and is successful. The Hindu understanding of worldly success is that it brings livelihood with dignity and self respect. Whereas, in the Hip Hop culture especially, you can see that the idea of success is different, and it is also glamorized and desired. R&B star, Trey Songz along with Hip Hop star, Drake, joined together to create the song, “Successful”. In the song, the two artists are singing about the benefits and their desire of being successful. The song begins with Trey Songz singing:
“The money, cars, the clothes, the hoes, I suppose….Yeuh! I want the money, money and the cars, cars and the clothes, the hoes, I suppose, I just wanna be, I just wanna be, Successful.”
In his eyes as well as in the eyes of other people, this is the type of success that people strive for.
When I think of the word Liberation, the first thing that comes to my mind is free; receiving freedom. This freedom can come from anything, whether a person may be freed from injustice, a job or a bad relationship. The Hindu belief of Liberation is that it is the highest goal of human life through which everything is accomplished. While looking for songs, I was able to find a variety of songs in which different artists sung about being liberated from various things. I think that artists nowadays are expressing their emotions more and therefore songs pertaining to liberation are also popular. A lot of female R&B artists base a lot of their songs on being liberated from painful relationships, because people across the world can relate to those songs. I noticed this especially while looking for songs for this blog assignment. Most of the liberation songs that I could find were sung by women.