It was late December 1999 when JAY-Z released his fourth album “Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter.”
From the artwork to the track list, it’s undeniable that this album is well-rounded and carries on the legacy he started to build with Reasonable Doubt three and a half years prior.
This isn’t an album review, nor is that the direction I want to go in. But in honour of this album, I wanted to take some lines from a great track and explore it.
The track in question is “Anything” which samples “I’d Do Anything” from the musical Oliver. It’s similar to the super successful “Hard Knock Life” from Vol. 2, but needless to say, it didn’t remotely achieve the same level of success. Perhaps that’s what we should explore here. The same thing doesn’t always work twice. Hard Knock Life with its Annie sample was crazy and it’s iconic to the point where it’s further been sampled by many other artists.
But recreating the success of the Annie sample in Ghetto Anthem didn’t work here, even though they were barely a year apart. It just goes to show you how quickly times change and how what works today might not work tomorrow. I mean, Hip-Hop changed a lot, year after year from the beginning until now. Every year it’s different. And my takeaway from that is that we have to be malleable and adaptable in whatever industry we’re in.
We have to get ahead of the curve, pioneer and lead the change whatever it may be. To quote Steve Jobs: “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them”.
People didn’t know they wanted Hard Knock Life until JAY-Z gave it to them. They didn’t know they wanted Big Pimpin’ until he gave that to them too.
But anyway, that’s just something that I thought was quite insightful to point out for someone to benefit.
The bars I’m looking at today are the following:
Don’t listen to your crew, do what works for you
Standing back from situations gives you the perfect view
You see the snakes in the grass and you wait on their ass
Bite your tongue for no one and whatever is said
Take it how they want, a closed mouth don’t get fed
Bro.. just.. c’mon man
Man, this is the stuff they don’t teach you at school. Heck, half the population don’t even have the chance to get taught this at home because their fathers are either absent or too busy doing other stuff.
JAY-Z essentially gives us five lessons in these bars:
1. He tells us to lower the noise. Everyone wants to tell you how it is from their perspective, but we must move according to what works for us.
2. Next, he tells us to observe and keep our eyes open. This is in line with what we’re told when looking for opportunities. If we’re looking, we’ll have a higher chance of finding them.
3. The third ties in with the second but goes further by saying that we can see the snakes by observing. And once we can see the snakes, we can use their manipulation against them.
4. The fourth is that no one should have power over your opinions. Nothing should stop you from speaking your truth.
5. And the fifth is that you can’t control people’s reactions. You can’t control how people feel. So if that’s the case, why would you bite your tongue in the first place? They can take it how they want, but the bottom line is that a closed mouth doesn’t get fed. i.e. if you don’t do what you gotta do, if you don’t say what you gotta say, and you don’t do the work you need to do, it’s guaranteed that nothing will happen.
This is one of the hidden gems from Jay’s extensive discography and the overall track has many deep elements. But for the context of this post, the above lines JAY-Z dropped were most relevant.
Honestly, that’s all for this one. And they say rap is evil. These man are doing more teaching than the entire educational system.
But anyway, I’m out of here man.
