Brian Chimezie English 1302 Ms. Fenton September 11, 2014 Benediction by August Alsina The song Benediction is by an R&B singer August Alsina featuring rapper Rick Ross. The song goes along with his album called Testimony, which was issued in April 2014. The album expresses his personal life of sex, drugs, and his youth when he lived in New Orleans. The album also reflects his deceased younger brother, who died when he was younger. He reaches out to the audience who has the same dilemma that he had, with the struggles and a bad past and tries to relate with them. Portraying as a blessing, testimony or benediction, as the name implies, the songs expresses three main concepts: the need of struggle in order to have success, the need of forgiveness and forgiving others, and the need of thanks once reaching the achievement. August Alsina’s song “Benediction” accurately depicts the idea of one’s struggle in the past transforming to one’s success and fame. Struggle is necessary in order to achieve success. Life isn’t just black and white, there are going to be ambiguous grey part of your life that is going to be …show more content…
The concept of forgiving is simple: letting go of all of your resentment and anger about the past. The action of forgiving however, is rather difficult. Resentments are very stressful and weigh us down with the inflated burdens of the past. Holding resentments doesn’t punish the other person, it punishes us as well. Without forgiving others, it brings a burden or obstacle to your goal of achieving success. So when you forgive, it removes all the burden you have and makes it easier to go forth. In verse two of August Alsina’s song, he sings “I pray you free me from my demons and keep me level.” The demons represent all the bad things that are buried inside of him, in this case, his past. So he want to let go of these demons and just go on with his life without the past slowing him