“Changes” by Tupac Shakur Essay

The song that I chose to analyze is Changes by Tupac Shakur. The late Tupac Shakur was an African American rapper who was shot dead years ago. His powerful lyrics have impacted the rap industry to this day, because he spoke the truth. His lyrics directly related to his everyday struggles, and how organism a successful African American is not an easy task to achieve. Rap usually duologue nearly events of everyday life, and the song Changes talks about racial profiling, poverty, and how racism affects the everyday life of African American people. Note that this song came out in about 1996 where things were different, however the lyrics of this song still hoop in the ears of people who ar affected by the evil of racism.The song starts off with the line I see no changes. The changes I believe he is referring are the changes that supposedly occurred after the Civil Rights Movement. My interpretation of what Tupac says is that, even though African American people are supposed to have m ore freedoms since the movement, he doesnt see many changes at all. In the first stanza Tupac talks about how the police do not really care about the bleak man, and that no one is going to help them but themselves. They need to start looking out for each other instead of killing each other. He talks about how no one cares that drugs and guns are being brought into the receives of African Americans everyday, and that when they die its just one less hungry mouth on the public assistance.The second stanza starts off with I see no changes. All I see is racist faces. This conveys the same thing I stated earlier. There are not many changes that have been made, and people are still just as racist as they were. He also talks about how the volume of the people in jail are blacks, but that is because they keep doing the things that are putting them there. They have no other way to get money, so they revive to selling drugs. He realizes that this is the reason African Americans are not su cceeding but there is nothing else they can do. At the end of the stanza he states this clearly when he says Well hey, well thats the way it is.In the final stanza, Tupac finally tries to convey that changes really do need to be made. He says Its time for us a people to start makin somechanges. Lets change the way we eat, lets change the way we live He is trying to tell the people of the African American community that there is hope. The way that his people have been trying to survive has not been working, so he says You see the old way wasnt working so its on us to dowhat we gotta do, to survive. He then talks about how he wants peace in the streets. He then calls for a war on poverty, instead of on drugs. He lets the people know that if they do see a successful black man, they will be jealous, but if they get that money the right way the cops will not be satisfactory to do anything about it. He ends the song by saying, as long as he is black he is going to stay strapped, which m eans that no matter what he does he is going to have to protect himself in someway, because someone is always going to be out to get him because of the color of his skin.