We don’t care, The College Dropout (4/13)

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You know the kids gon’ act a fool
When you stop the programs for after school
And they DCFS
, some of ’em dyslexic
They favorite 50 Cent song “12 Questions”

We scream: “rocks, blow, weed, park”, see, now we smart
We ain’t retards, the way teachers thought
Hold up, hold fast, we make more cash
Now tell my momma I belong in that slow class

One of the reasons people seem to love ‘The Old Kanye’ is his focus on social issues and insights into black, working class culture (All Falls Down). Here Kanye opens his debut record by slaughtering the education system and indeed the teachers who judged Kanye for being ‘slow.’ He makes the point about after-school programmes being ceased wrongly before attacking the educators and attitudes to those who are not academic. In addition, he references Chicago drug dealer lingo (‘rocks, blow, weed, park’), a phrase used to inform potential buyers what was purchasable at the time. Here Kanye is depicting how some people in black communities may not be academically smart, but use ‘street smarts’ to get themselves out of poverty. Entrepreneurial, huh?

Written by Trevor Twohig

Freelance writer from London. I enjoy writing sports, music and self-help articles primarily. My first novel ‘Sunny Sands’ will be released in 2018.

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