Make sure that you click the Soundcloud on this one. I love this song. It hit home in some serious ways. But even besides that, his voice plays perfectly over the beat. Melodic. It’s a beautiful, thought-provoking song.
I disagree with his points about music. I think that the music industry has changed. It is so fragmented that music is truly what you make it. And then the continuing trend of fusing rap into rhythm & blues deserves recognition too. All in all, There are opportunities to be introduced to artists like Flow the DJ that rap about consciousness and love. You just have to be willing to look in all the places. You ain’t gotta look too far for flow though! Make sure you check him out on his Social Media accounts and YouTube!
Well, 50 made a name for himself with his fit body, slurry flow, and… Money, cars, and turning up in the club.
He actually became famous largely on an album called ‘In Da Club’
Then, the line Flo says – “Got your hands on some change”- 50 Cent, ironically, is a metaphor for change. (Ironic because his shenanigans do feel like more of the same from the sector of the industry 50 operates in. he’s not exactly the MOST renaissance african–american man walking these American streets.)
And boy, based on his social media images and captions, he fit the song so well for me.
This isn’t a reflection of how I feel about 50 Cent. I just think that the line is so thin. I don’t know a lot of these artists well enough to know whether they suffer for their pursuit of materialistic pleasure. Additionally, a lot of rappers are businessmen first. Literally, hustlers born into environments of scarcity. And, that changes outlooks and patterns of behavior.
**Oh, and just for the curious – That isn’t 50 Cent’s girlfriend. Just a woman from a photoshoot that he did on his Instagram. I want the readers to be aware that I manipulated 50’s Instagram to suit the storyline of this poem. I am in no way suggesting that 50 Cent is who Flow the DJ had in mind when writing the bars. But boy did he just fit, so to speak.
So, 50 just became the ideal candidate for this piece. I admit it’s different swagger from the usual #FlowFriday BUT, I am interested to hear Flo’s feedback on this curation, (and you too).
Questions Posed:
Can you have money, pursue money, make money, without being completely shaped by it? Is money what happened to R&B?
And does the world that we reminisce, via nineties love and R&B throwbacks, actually exist? Or are we idealizing a time that was rife with its own struggles?
[By the way, I freakin love me some fifty. “You can find me in the club…” 😎😉]
Flow is a rapper raised in Decatur, GA. He started writing music at the age of 13, recording his 1st song in East Orange, NJ where he would visit for the Summer. He took a brief hiatus from writing music to DJ in college but quickly got back to his roots...
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