Lyric essay revised

It is often said that rap lyrics contain no meaning and are just ramblings of cuss words and vulgar references but that is not always the case. Some artists have a true message in their lyrics, one such examples is Tupac Shakur’s song “Changes.” This song delivers a pretty direct message about the need for a change in the world. The title alone gives that away, but the lyrics expose the speaker’s feelings as well as the problem that needs to be changed. This artist effectively makes his argument using two types of reasoning, pathos and ethos.
In order to clearly understand the song who the speaker is must be determined. The speaker says “I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black.” So we learn that the speaker is poor and black the speaker identifies his sex when he refers to himself as a “brother.” The vernacular used in the song, such as dropping g’s and replacing –er with –a, leads us to believe he is a younger man. This song does not leave much room to wonder what it is about. Tupac directly talks about the problems with drugs and violence in our society. He addresses the factors of race and economic status in the song. Though these lyrics could be read as an offensive it is hard to ignore them and since the speaker is a black man he has effectively removed most of the racist problem with the song.
The artist effectively uses pathos by appealing directly to the listeners feelings. His Use of disturbing images provokes the listener to actually pay attention to the song. HE uses images such as, “Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares? One less hungry mouth on the welfare.” No human with any sense of morals could read or hear this line of the song and not be affected. By using a horrid image involving children he will provoke a feeling of sympathy. Most people are sensitive to the needs of kids before adults; that is not to say that the other lines involving adults are not effective. The numerous images the artist uses containing murder and death would obviously shock most people; and relate to the few who live it. As people we are attracted to what shocks us, like the popularity of horror movies. The artist effectively catches the audience attention and uses the basic set of morals most of his listeners would likely follow to make them understand how hurtful the problem he is addressing is. This almost makes a parallel between ethos and pathos.
What makes his argument even more believable and touching is that he puts the speaker in as a victim of this problem. This is an effective use of logos. The song is well organized in that the artist first establishes the speaker as a knowledgeable member of the problem. The speaker even puts himself directly into some of the situations being discussed; he refers to himself as a “brother” and to the people whom the stories are about as “brothers”. Though this method of argument is less affective than the previous two it further supports those arguments. People are more likely to trust some one inside of a situation. It also makes the audience stop and think if someone involved in a situation can notice how horrible it is then how have us on the outside not seen what is going on. Since it is often harder to see a problem on the inside it makes the reader realize how big of a mistake they have made by not noticing the problem.
Since often people do not want to admit when there is a problem the artist tasks of making an effective argument even harder. Not only must the artist to attract the attention of the audience of outsiders but has to provoke a want to change a problem they seem to have been ignoring. If he does not carefully present the problem the audience could become offended and close up before he is able to make the argument. The artist easily overcomes this problem by just putting the problem in the audience’s face. He even seems to address the hypocrites that he could be actually aiming this argument towards. He pokes directly at those members of the audience saying “all I see is racist faces,” which could be taken offensively by the audience. The manner though it which he states the previous quote does not seem to be directed at one specific races. Though that runs the risk of pushing the audience away he takes the risks and through use of heart wrenching imagery is able to present a sound argument. This song, though aimed at a younger audience, can be retrieved by any age group and the problems which the song addresses should not be ignored by any age group.

http://www.lyrics007.com/2Pac%20(Tupac%20Shakur)%20Lyrics/Changes%20Lyrics.html