Lamar And Langston Hughes: Poem Analysis

Searching deeply in my music and poems looking for a poet or a song writer to write about cultural context. After looking at Kendrick Lamar and Langston Hughes trying to decide between the two I had remembered something that had deep cultural context. It was the song “Straight out of Compton” by N.W.A. This rap song talks about where they are from. For each of the rappers they set the setting and gave you a character that they represent. The three rappers that did that song was, Ice Cube, MC Ren, Eazy E, and Dr. Dre was on the music. For the the first verse Ice Cube raps in the first two lines, “Straight outta Compton, crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube/From the gang called Niggas Wit Attitudes.” Basically in these two lines he was giving us the character he represented and the setting. As Cube continues on he then goes into saying that if you mess with me then you are going to get it. He goes on about, “Niggas start to mumble, they wanna rumble.” What Cube was saying here was that if people are talking about him then they must want to rumble with him. Cube goes on about who he is and where he is from in the first verse.

It’s not the same exact way, but it’s similar. Ren still introduces his character and sets the setting. In the first two lines he goes about saying how crazy he is. He also goes on saying that the more people that he takes out the bigger his reputation gets. In the lines, “A crazy motherfucker from the street.” Where Ren was coming from was that Compton wasn’t easy growing up in back then. If you weren’t crazy already then the streets would’ve made you crazy. Ren continues to go on about his character in the second