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Jay-Black Racism

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“The Story of O.J.” by Jay-Z, is a powerful and brutally honest criticism of America’s incomplete social and economic development. Unlike all of his previous albums, which focused on the size of his Maybach or selling bricks on the streets of Brooklyn, his newest album, 4:44, is an indictment of the socio-economic conditions preventing the minority from receiving the same benefits as those born in the majority. “The Story of O.J.” successfully draws awareness to the pervasiveness of black stereotyping, endorses the unambiguous benefits of capitalist hustle, and, although not explicitly, connects the central theme of progress to all cultures through the undistorted images of his lyrics, artwork, and music sampling decisions.
Jay-Z illustrates, …show more content…
By starting the song with, “my skin, skin, is skin black”, he bluntly depicts the importance of skin color. More importantly the hesitation through punctuation sets the somber reality of the chorus: a list of adjectives, each one followed by the word “N***a”. Through this chorus, Jay-Z leads the listener to feel any qualities a person may have, their primary description is their skin. The infamous O.J. Simpson quote, “I’m not black, I’m O.J.” is one of the strongest examples of race over status. Even the most famous Africans Americans cannot exempt themselves from their culture. The speaker responds to O.J.’s quote with “...okay” completely dismissing the notion of being better than every other African American just because O.J. was rich. Has American society, even after going through the Civil War and the human rights movement of the 60s, become callous to …show more content…
A simple rhythm can enable a person to draw an emotional connection to the song, which significantly improves the likelihood of understanding the subliminal messages developed by the artist. The intro is a robust, jazzy-hip-hop rhythm from Nina Simone’s 1966 song “Four Women” which transcends the listener to the bygone era of the 1960s, a turbulent era of American history characterized by segregation and discrimination. This historical understanding, coupled with Nina Simone’s powerful vocals, captures the listener’s empathy, relating this rhythm to an event in his or her own life when they were discriminated against or stereotyped. Even the one line quote from O.J. Simpson — his attempt to become superior to an average black man — being dismissed by Jay-Z solidifies the listener’s understanding of prejudice: nothing separates you from your skin color. In addition to sampling, Jay-Z utilizes a simple hip-hop beat that many generations of hip-hop fans can enjoy. After all, the wider the fan base of a song, the higher the sales, the more people the message spreads to. Jay-Z has proven to the music industry countless number of times that he is a musical genius and adept lyricist, but in the production of “The Story of O.J.,” he experimented with a new method of reaching his audience: the music

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