For the second installment of this Civic Issue Blog, I wanted to look at a more contemporary song that perhaps better represents criminality in music we think of today. I think the perfect example comes from Jay Z’s song “99 Problems”.
The song, which appeared in the 2003 album “The Black Album”, has three main verses, but for the purposes of this blog, I want to place special emphasis on the second and most famous verse. In this verse, Jay Z describes an encounter between himself and a police officer after being pulled over. The scene is set in 1994, not because racial profiling was especially rampant in that year compred to 2003, but because Jay Z would have been in his early twenties. A police officer initiates a stop, and despite possessing drugs in the back of his car, Jay Z pulls over. The police officer says that Jay Z was “going 55 in a 54,” and it quickly becomes obvious that the officer pulled him over because of his race.
As evidenced from this Jay Z song as well as many others of the time, race and crime- especially in the rap genre of music- are deeply interconnected. This isn’t to say that they are connected because African-American music artists committed crimes which leaked into their music, but the exact opposite. No matter their actions, they would always be seen as criminals by the law and those who racially profiled them to be criminals. The lyrics, “License and registration and step out of the car, Are you carrying a weapon on you, I know a lot of you are,’” doesn’t reflect a single officer’s racism, but instead an entire culture surrounding the presumed guilt of young African-American males. Here, Jay Z knows he is getting pulled over for nothing (the speed limit is obviously 55), but he is still in the wrong.
While the song depicts a young Jay Z involved in crime, it also reaches a much larger and broader audience in the form of African-Americans in general. The racial profiling as described in the song affects every black person in America. As concluded by a study performed by Stanford University, black and hispanic drivers in the U.S. are more likely to be stopped and more than twice as likely to be searched after being initially stopped. (1) These statistics do not stem from minority drivers simply being more wreckless or unsafe drivers compared to their white counterparts, but instead they are manufactured by officers who see these drivers as more prone to possessing illegal contraband or doing something illegal.
(Rate at which minority drivers are searched compared to white drivers)
Another jarring aspect of this is that racial profiling is quite legal by most measures. According to the court case Whren vs. The United States, the supreme court ruled that a propensity to pull over drivers of specific races did not violate any law as long as the original apopolgia for the stop was justified (2). Keep in mind, however, that the bar for initiating a justified traffic stop is incredibly low. This decision gives credence to many of Jay Z’s complaints in the song. In an America where young African-American males are disproportionately stopped, searched, and interrogated by unjust systems and police officers, it is almost impossible for one’s life not to be impeded in a significant way. In this sense, the racial injustice African-Americans (especially younger males) face hampers them, and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that they must fall into. As Jay Z explains in a Howard Stern 2010 radio interview, “When I am faced with everyone telling me I’m a criminal, I’m gonna get by through selling and doing these illegal acts.”
Another interesting aspect of this song is the conjunction of criminality and constitutional rights. Despite having this symbolic figure of the police system pull Jay Z over for arbitrary reasons, Jay Z uses the law to help himself out. Explicitly stated, the song discusses various protections granted by the fourth amendment. In this ironic event, the system that the cops are allegedly enforcing is actually protecting the artist from unjust profiling. This certainly also highlights the intellect of Jay Z while also enforcing the common stereotype in rap of fighting the law. In this case, it is a verbal rebuttal rather than a physical altercation. Nonetheless, the song “99 Problems” sheds light on the relationship between criminality and music through Jay Z’s infusion of personal experience into the song as well as the broader relatability that African-American audiences can appreciate.
The right music plays not just to our ears, but to our heads as well. No matter the genre of the song or artist, musicians have forever attempted to relate to their audience through the power of intense lyricism and instrumentals. We have seen a myriad of genres do this, from the Ink Spot’s sombering love songs of the 1930s to modern day rappers such as Kanye or Eminem. Despite being nearly a century apart, all artists use their music to tell a story- one which can be analyzed and comprehended through a civic lense.
In this first blog, I wish to highlight how criminality has been viewed and utilized by both the public and musicians over the decades, specifically focusing on Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” recorded at his 1968 album “Live at Folsom Prison.”
When one thinks of crime and music today, likely culprits to come to their mind are rap and metal- both genres which assuredly contain vulgar depictions of drug use, robbery, and murder (likely even in that order). One study even finds that the majority of those who listen to “violent”, modern rap do so becuase of the exhilerating activities spouted by the artists (1). With this information in mind, it is clear that criminality inspires something in the audience, but how did audiences of the 60s respond? “Folsom Prison Blues”, Cash’s popular single (#1 on US Country Billboard and 32 on US Top 100) gives us keen insight in the matter of how criminals were represented in the music industry at this time.
Firstly, let us begin with the most obvious similarities between “Folsom Prison Blues” and more modern examples of criminality found in music. It is important to acknowledge for whom Cash recorded this album. The title is not just another piece of artistry, for he really performed for the population of Folsom, California State Prison. The famous line “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” drew loud cheer and applause from the audience, showing the extent of the persona Cash displayed on stage. This persona is not one of a mere country farmer or small-town man, but instead of a grizzled killer devoid of any reason for his crimes. This does not draw disgust in this upbeat song, but it instead succeeds in drawing admiration from the crowd. This lyric utilizes the ultimate form of relatability, for many men in the audience lived the exact words being sung on stage, perhaps demonstrating the ultimate form of civic engagement where the artist is an extension of the audience. These lyrics did not only resonate with the prisoners, for both the album and the single reached the top of the charts among all U.S. and Canadian audiences(2).
Despite my focus on the similarities between Cash’s 60s hit and more contemporary music, there is one major deviation which I think highlights the transformation of the representation of criminility in music. Reviewing the lyrics of the song, one finds a contrasting, almost contradictory sombering wish of freedom over an upbeat guitar solo. The lyrics, “Well I know I had it coming, I know I can’t be free. But those people keep a-moving, and that’s what tortures me.” These lyrics no longer inspire admiration in the audience, and instead reminds the listener (and of course the prisoners in the live audience) that despite the up-beat nature of the lyrics and instrumentals, the sobering reality grounds these illegal deeds in perpetual meloncholy.
This motif is prevelant throughout the entire album, not just the title track. The most significant may be in “Cocaine Blues”, where Cash’s fictional character Willy Lee lives a tale of criminal anomie- addicted to drugs and alcohol after committing the murder of his girlfriend. The song switches from story telling to a plea to the audience in its concluding line, “Come all you gotta listen unto me, lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.” This general theme denotes the important difference between criminality represented in earlier and modern music: where modern artists use criminality to highlight their own achievements and clout, older musicians such as Johnny Cash offer experiences from failed lives of crime. Jay Z’s famous song, “99 Problems”, for example, highlights the rapper’s ability to outsmart the police mentally and physically. Comparitively, “Folsom Prison Blues” tells the tale of an already immured convict helpless against those who imprisoned him, simply wishing to be free.
While anyone can cherry pick a few songs from certain decades to make their point, I believe this album perfectly demonstrates the representation of criminality and criminals in music. Despite being two very different genres and styles of music, I believe both kinds of songs can be analyzed through important civic and cultural contexts to make them uniquely distinct.
