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The blueprint
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African American Literature continues to advance from renowned authors, such as Phillis Wheatley, to slave narratives, beat poets, and the relatively new form of present day rap. As markers of African American Literature, Zora Neal Hurston, Richard Wright, Toni Cade Bambara, and Edward P Jones demonstrate overarching themes of social inequality through interracial/intraracial conflict, literary devices such as similes and African American vernacular dialect. Jay Z incorporates these characteristics to his album, marking The Blueprint as an extension of AAL. More specifically he emphasizes the theme of social inequality, the repeated use of the word “like” to represent similes, and particular terms from the African American vernacular. Through his artistic medium of rap, Jay Z is able to “give you the news with a twist, it's just his ghetto point-of-view” (Renegade-Jay Z).
African American Literature continues to advance from renowned authors, such as Phillis Wheatley, to slave narratives, beat poets, and the relatively new form of present day rap. As markers of African American Literature, Zora Neal Hurston, Richard Wright, Toni Cade Bambara, and Edward P Jones demonstrate overarching themes of social inequality through interracial/intraracial conflict, literary devices such as similes and African American vernacular dialect. Jay Z incorporates these characteristics to his album, marking The Blueprint as an extension of AAL. More specifically he emphasizes the theme of social inequality, the repeated use of the word “like” to represent similes, and particular terms from the African American vernacular. Through his artistic medium of rap, Jay Z is able to “give you the news with a twist, it's just his ghetto point-of-view” (Renegade-Jay Z).
Thematic Attributes
Social equality, or more so the lack of it, overarches as a main thematic element within African American Literature. After the Jim Crow laws ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African American Literature survived contrary to Kenneth Warren’s beliefs.
Toni Cade Bambara uses children in her short stories to shed light on the social inequality, specifically in New York, that still exists due to the divide of power between blacks and whites. In "The Lesson" (1972) a field trip of children arrive at FAO Schwartz Toy Store in Manhattan, where they are forced to realize and question the social chasm in which they have been living.
"Imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven”. |
Jay Z’s Album The Blueprint, appropriates African American Literature through his personal experience with social inequality during his childhood in the Marcy Projects.
“What, the streets robbed me, wasn't educated properly”. Education illustrates a privileging marker of social class. Deprivation of education is a cause of factors that can be pinpointed down to money. The social gap can be found between a group that cannot afford the time or resources to send a child off to public education, and those that can. At this point, education becomes a luxury. Figure 1, below, depicts 32% of the households in Brooklyn, New York, make $25,000 and under during 2012. The average cost of a public four-year college (in-state), was $8,655 (35% of the household income for the year) in 2012. This did not include room, board, books, and more. If included it would cost $22,261 (89% of the household income for the year. FIGURE 1 |
Opening that album is “The Ruler’s Back” which exemplifies the idea that he is, “representin' for the seat where Rosa Parks sat, where Malcolm X was shot, where Martin Luther was popped”, which gives agency to the social inequality that is still present today.
The Use of Similes in AAL
FIGURE 2 |
Figure 2, to the left, displays “like” as the most frequently used word in Jay Z’s four classic albums. When searching for this token on Voyant in terms of classic albums, “like” is used in lieu of similes. In “Song Cry” of The Blueprint, one line states, “Good dude, I know you love me like cooked food”.
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Figure 3, to the right, shows “like” as the most frequently used word in classic African American short stories. The data on Voyant shows this token is also used for similes. One line in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” states, “…just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship…”
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FIGURE 3 |
African American Vernacular
Another key literary device that transcends from the past is the African American vernacular found in both this genre of literature and in Jay Z’s The Blueprint. FIGURE 4 , below, shows the use of the vernacular “em” in both Zora Neal Hurston’s “Spunk”, and Jay Z’s The Blueprint.
“Hood could swallow ‘em and, bullets’ll follow ‘em”.
- Jay Z "U Don't Know"
FIGURE 4
“She tol’ him tuh take ‘em right straight back home”.
-Zora Neal Hurston
Analyzing rap lyrics as African American Literature, demonstrates the evolution of this literary canon.
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