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The Last Samurai

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Submitted By skyapdude
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One Dance The song “Dance with the Devil” was written by Immortal Technique. The genre is rap and if you listen to the whole song it’s sad and can also be disturbing in some ways. Its beat is steady with piano in the back round giving effect to the sadness in this song. Songs can teach you lessons, and in “Dance with the Devil” it has a very important lesson. This song is a true story telling you a very important lesson about reality; how these situations can happen in anyone’s life, so you should always be careful and make better decisions. If you make one very bad important decision in your life, then you might just ruin it. The lead rapper in Immortal Technique is Felipe Andrew Coronel, he talks about a kid he met and basically tells the kids whole life story on how he ruined his life. He says at the beginning of the song “I once knew a man who’s real name was William, his primary concern was making a million”. William, otherwise known as Billy, wanted to be a hardcore thug like all the other people he would hang out with and make a lot of money doing it. Through out the song he talks about how William started to sell drugs to make money and eventually dropped out of school to sell weed. Williams dream of making millions blinded him and he started to turn out like one of the dirty thugs he wanted to be. Eventually William got arrested, then the songwriter says, “He built a reputation ‘cause he could hustle and steal, but got locked once and didn’t hesitate to squeal”. This is saying how William told the cops everything and people called him a snitch. Since he snitched and told cops whatever him or his friends did, his “crew” lost respect for him. Later on he started to rob people, steal, anything he could do to gain his respect back from his crew. He started fights all the time and started selling crack to pursue his dream of making millions. The crew told William that anyone could start fights or sell drugs, but a real thug could “stab someone until they die…standing in front of them, staring straight into their eyes”. Then William knew he had to step it up and do something to let his crew know he was for real. Someone suggested raping a girl to prove he was cold hearted, so he agreed and met them one night to do it. The story goes on and William goes out with his crew late one night smoking and drinking for entertainment. They found a women walking home and they followed her quietly. William puts a shirt over her head and pulls her into a lobby of a hotel, where they started to beat her. After that they brought her to the roof, where they each took turns raping her, she was trying to scream at the top of her lungs through her broken jaw. When they were done one of their crewmates pulled out a new gun to kill the women so they wouldn’t get in trouble. Then William was about to shoot her and he pulled down the shirt but what he saw made him start to “cringe and stutter“. It turns out he was “looking into the eyes of his mother“. His mother started crying even worse then when they were raping her. William then started remembering how his mom used to come home late from work to support them. Now all the work she did was for nothing. I think that the shirt is a symbol showing how William was being blinded by fame and fortune. William started feeling lonely and scared and tried praying to God because he didn’t know what to do; but he says, “only the devil responded ‘cause God wasn’t there“. He ended up jumping off the roof and killing himself. A part of the chorus goes, Everyone trying to be trife never face the consequences You probably only did a month for minor offences Ask an inmate doing life if he had another chance But then again there’s always the wicked that knew in advance. The word trife is a slang word-meaning thug-like or gangster. In this second part of the chorus he’s saying that doing a month in jail isn’t as bad as serving a life sentence. He says, “Ask a inmate doing life if he had another chance”; by this he means that people in jail serving a life sentence most likely regret what they did to get that consequence. William couldn’t even deal with the consequences of his fate it was so horrible. Jail isn’t fun and inmates like that, I’m sure if they had another chance they would choose a different decision then what they did before. After that line is a little disturbing when he says, “But then again there’s always the wicked that knew in advance” because there are cruel, hateful people in jail who knew what the consequences would be if they got caught and they still did not care. You just have to remember that there are crazy people out in the world. They knew before hand that they were most likely going to jail for life which isn’t a rational persons decision. It would be a lot easier to just avoid any people who seem crazy and just let them be. The crew killed his mother and never spoke about it again after that night. The song writer goes on saying to “listen to this story because what he’s telling is true, he was there with Billy Jacobs and he raped his mom too“. He says “the devil follows him wherever he goes now“. Just thinking that brings scary thoughts. What if you thought the devil followed you around everywhere? I would be praying to God every second holding some holy water and a cross if I thought that. I wouldn’t want to be manipulated by the devil. The story in this song paints a whole picture that you can really understand what happened. The main purpose of this song is telling you to not make bad decisions in your life. You will make little bad decisions obviously but learn from them and don’t keep letting them messing up your life. One bad decision can ruin your life forever. I think that’s what he means by “So when the devil wants to dance with you, you better say never/Because the dance with the devil might last you forever”. That is a powerful ending statement for this song. These kinds of things can happen to anyone, any race, any where. You should always be careful because like the story of Adam & Eve; the devil could be testing you to see if you could be manipulated. It’s up to you to make the better decision. Take risks only to improve your life. If the consequences are not worth it, then don’t take the risk.

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