Biggie Small's Everyday Struggle

To many, rap is seen as the music of gangsters and criminals, a genre overflowing with profanity, misogyny, and ignorant slang. It is commonly depicted as a music without real meaning, a music with a chief goal of promoting violence and glorifying gangs. But to those who have explored this extremely broad category of music, that depiction is mostly wrong. Rap (an acronym for rhythm and poetry) can be, and is, just as complex and skill requiring as any other type of music. And just like most all music it serves to convey the hardships or success of the artist threw sound.

The rapper Biggie Smalls is a great example of such an artist. But not only does he write about the individual strife he himself faced, Biggie reveals some of the fundamental problems poor communities face, from systematic injustice to destructive stereotypes, and how those obstacles prevent so many from achieving any real success. To many, including myself, Biggie illuminates these challenges through eloquent lyrics and intense imagery. One song titled “Juicy” does exactly that. It begins with him dedicating the album to all the teachers that told him he would never amount to anything as well as all the niggaz in the “struggle”. In that song he goes on to state the misunderstanding of black stereotypes and how that affected him personally. Biggie uses his musical talent to speak out against the destructive stereotypes black Americans face as well as the extremely hard task of growing up in the ghetto. In another song called “Everyday Struggle” Biggie elaborates on the truly challenging task of growing up and making it out of the ghetto. In his music, especially the song “Everyday Struggle”, Biggie reveals that for many the only way of making a comfortable living for a person and their family in ghetto communities is through criminal activity, which would then most likely result in prison time. Thus, Biggie Smalls paints for his audience the vicious cycle of poverty and crime that grips and destroys so many black lives. While most rap does serve as reinforcement to the stereotypes of poverty and ghetto communities, some artists like smalls use rap as a platform to try and eliminate them.