Number 3

After talking more about what creative nonfiction really is and how to write it I thought of a song that I know.  The artist’s name is Sage Francis and the song is called Little Houdini.  The song is based on a true story about a man named Christopher Daniel Gay.  He was in prison and broke out so he could be with his mother while she was on her death bed and say goodbye to her for one last time.  The thing that makes Sage unique with his writing style and lyricism is how he put his own thoughts into this while telling the story of this man.  The more writing classes I take in college the more amazed I am by the creativity and skill some of the hip hop artists I listen to actually have.  Whether Sage realizes it or not he was using creative nonfiction to tell this story.  He didn’t know anything about the man but did research on him and was able to tell the story about this guy like he knew him personally.  He gets into the mind of Christopher and tries to explain what he was thinking while he was stealing these things to race to Tennessee to see his mother before she died.  Sage talks about him stealing a Wal-Mart truck and almost sympathizes with him and tries to get the listener to look through the eyes of Christopher.  The fact Sage was able to put it in the perspective of Christopher really does change your thoughts on the whole situation.  Well at least it did with me.  I try to think of myself like Christopher and I know how important family is to me.  If I could have tried to do it I might have tried to break out too just to say goodbye to my mother before she died of cancer like Christopher’s mother did.  You will always have the people who will feel since he did something wrong he needed to do his time and if he really did care that much about his mother he wouldn’t have done what he did in the first place to be put in jail but people do make mistakes.  When Christopher was caught he wasn’t able to go to his mother’s funeral which also makes me question sometimes the ways of America.  Sage raises so many questions with this piece and states how he feels about so many different situations that I could probably write a 10 page paper on just this.  And this is why I love the style of Indie Hip Hop artists.

Here is the song also:

Second Post

I feel my writing ability is very average. I never feel like when I write something that it is something I want to share with other people. It's usually something that I'll just try to get it over with and get an average grade with.  But for some reason last class after we wrote the letters I really wanted to share that.  I never felt more proud about anything that I've ever written before.  While I was writing it I didn’t really realize I was writing. I just let my pen go and my thoughts flow.  It felt good writing all that stuff down and sharing it with the class.  I still feel like an asshole for losing it a little while reading it but it was something I honestly couldn’t help.  It's been a year since Martin passed away from drunk driving with a friend in a car.  It was a shock to the whole community and really hit everyone hard.  I've always used music to help me through with it but after writing that letter it really made me realize that even if there is no one to talk to at that moment, just write down how you feel and it really does help.  I’ve never been into the “soft” stuff like that before but surprisingly it really did help.  I felt like I could have written for hours.  It was such a different and weird feeling. I feel more confident in my writing ability since that class too.  I am actually excited to start writing other things.  I want to try to push myself this semester and become a better writer and I really think I can do it.  I feel like this song is very fitting too for my letter that I wrote.  This song, and basically the whole EP, helped me get through the death of Martin.  MURS knows how to hit a point in his lyrics.  It is like he was going through the same thing I was going through with this song. The EP was supposed to be written for a black teenager going through high school but it’s amazing how I was able to connect to it so well.  The song is called A Friends Blues by MURS. 

My first post

The last time we had class we had all of the introductions and I said that I was really into Indie Hip Hop. So I decided for my first post I want to explain more about that.  Such a small portion of what Hip Hop is is what is played on the radio.  When people listen to what is on the radio they hear things about guns, sex, and drugs.  With Indie Hip Hop though, it is a completely different scene.  One of the great things about the indie scene is the storytelling aspect to the music. A lot of the song's that you hear Indie Hip Hop artists write have to deal with telling a story and getting people to relate to what they are saying.  The reason why it isn't bigger and played on the radio is because they don't get the push that the major record labels can use to get their artists out to the public and make money.  Now I'm not saying ALL mainstream hip hop is bad because Lupe Fiasco, Kid Cudi, and Kanye West are just a few of the names that have some of the same aspects to their music as Indie Hip Hop artists have in theirs.  Their lyrics actually make sense and it isn't always about the same things.  But when I hear people like Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane on the radio it makes me sick because honestly I feel that anyone could do what they do.  There is nothing to their lyrics and all they do is talk over beats about nothing.  It also upsets me because I listen to the music of my dad's generation and there are great bands like The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and The Beatles.  Bob Dylan was an amazing story teller and that is what made him so good.  The story telling aspect to music I feel is gone.  People don’t look at music as an art form anymore.  They see it as a way to look ‘cool’ and fit in in high school.  Artists are more worried about selling their records then making something that might help someone or mean something or people 20 years from now will look at and be like ‘wow, that really describes that generation well.’  I look at my generation and what my kids might find if they go looking for the music dad listened to when he was young, they are going to find people like Lil Wayne.  I don't want to be labeled as that kind of generation.  It's why I try so hard to push the people that I listen to, to show that there ARE good musicians in my generation, there ARE artists that still do the same kind of things that were being done back in say the 60s or 70s.  You just have to look underground for them.  Some of my favorite Indie Hip Hop artists are Atmosphere, Cunninlynguists, MURS, Living Legends, and Cage.  They are some of the bigger names of the Indie Hip Hop scene.  There are also many different levels and genres to Indie hip hop but I won’t get into that. At least on this post.  To give you a sample of what I'm talking about and show you what I actually mean, I will post a more mainstream hip hop song that is big right now and I will post a song by one of my favorite Indie artists.


This song is called 6 foot 7 foot by Lil Wayne featuring Cory Gunz. It's off of his newest album called The Carter IV.

This song is called Just For Show by Atmosphere. It's off of their newest album called The Family Sign.

When you listen to these two songs try to look and listen to things like their lyrics, the style of the beats, the way they rhyme and annunciate their words, and what point they are trying to get across in the song.  Also, look at the videos and see what they are trying to tell you as well.