"Changes"

“I see no changes wake up in the morning and I ask myself is life worth living should I blast myself?” Does this sound like something you think about every morning when you wake up? My guess would be that you probably don’t ever think this! According to Tupac Amaru Shakur, this is what he thought every morning getting out of bed. Tupac is a famous rapper, song writer, and actor who was very famous, most people knew him for his rapping skills. One of his number one hits was a single that he wrote about his life growing up, which is called “Changes”.
Usually when listening to a song you can catch me singing along. Who doesn’t like to sing along to a song with a good beat? But have you ever thought about the song itself and looked deeper into its lyrics? Everyone should start listening to the song along with the beat; it will make you change your perception on a lot of music. It is amazing what you can discover about an artist and his past just by listening closer to their music.
“Changes”, a song by Tupac, addresses many issues, such as racism, drugs, gangs, and police brutality. All these are topics to which Tupac had to grow up dealing with. Tupac was born on June 16, 1971. He grew up when a lot was happening with racism within America. Martin Luther King, Jr had been assassinated only 2-3 years earlier because of his “I have a dream” speech. Tupac seemed to have a very hard life growing up, being surrounded by violence, but somewhere around age 12, he found himself at the Baltimore School for the Arts. Here is where he studied acting, poetry, and jazz.
“But some things will never change, try to show another way but you stayin’ in the dope game…” When Tupac was 17, Afeni, his mother, got addicted to crack. As in his song it says people were addicted to drugs and would try changing their ways without removing the drugs from their lives. Since his mother was one of those people who “stayed in the dope game”, he didn’t want to deal with it. This led Tupac to find a new home with his friend Ray Luv, and Ray’s mother Leila Steinberg. Tupac was known as being a more well-round student than the average. Liela was very proud of him and for that she decided to organize a concert to help show Tupac’s talents to others. The concert led him to being signed to Digital Underground, a famous record label. His professional entertainment career began to hit off in around 1991, when he debuted his first rap single “Same Song”. Tupac put out a few more CD’s before he died at the age of 25 in a drive by shooting. Having him die is such a harsh way brings me back to his song, with Tupac claiming that he can’t ever just be calm because he has always got to be watching his back for some pay back. “And as long as I stay black I gotta stay strapped and I never get to lay back ‘cause I always got to worry about the pay backs…”. His death could have possibly been some sort of payback from someone or some gang.
“And still I see no changes can’t a brother get a little peace…” Tupac stated that his first album was aimed towards young black males facing problems. It seemed to make it all the worse for him. Such as in one incident a young teen claimed that he killed the Texas trooper because Tupac’s album inspired him to. Maybe the teen took it the wrong way when hearing the lyrics “But tell the cops they can’t touch this, I don’t trust this when they try to rush I bust this…”
“Changes” really is a moving song. It talks a lot about racism and about how Tupac felt growing up being black. “I’m tired of being poor and even worse I’m black...”, “Pull the trigger kill a [black] he’s a hero...”, “One less hungry mouth on the welfare...”. Reading just those three verses of the first part of the song, you can see that when Tupac was growing up no one seemed to care about blacks. He says how it is no fun being poor, especially when your black. Cops would shoot the blacks that they seen on the streets because they figured it to be less money for everyone else to pay for the fact that most black were just people who were on welfare.
“We gotta start making changes learn to see my as a brother instead of two distant strangers...”. Tupac is trying to get everyone to understand we are all human beings it shouldn’t matter what color or gender you are, we are all brothers/sisters. “I see no changes all I see is racist faces, misplaced hate makes disgrace to races...” People of course are always getting out of hand with anger, which they still do, but back 30 years ago when you are growing up as a black person, people would hate you just because of your race. No one noticed anything good a black did. The police were very much racist, so most took all their anger out on a black, even if he/she was minding their own business doing no harm. “The penitentiary’s packed and its filled with blacks..”. Then take them to jail for no apparent reason.
Throughout the lyrics of the song I have stated, many of them are mainly dealing with racism, police brutality, and gangs. There is also one other major thing I would like to point out in his song, and it is the bridge. He states “That’s just the way it is, things will never be the same, that’s just the way it is...” When he says this it makes me realize and understand that this is still going on in a lot of places. He is right, it probably won’t change, their will probably always be those racist people. It can get better though, as it has. Not as much police brutality or as much racism is happening to often anymore. There will always be that little bit of it though, that no one can seem to change. “I wonder what it takes to make this one better place let’s erase the wasted, take the evil out of people they’ll be acting right…”
Tupac is a great rapper and R & B artist. I have always loved to listen to his work. He has made me take a whole new look on how I listen to music. I listen more in depth now, not just to the beat. It makes me enjoy the song so much more and it actually teaches me things I have yet to learn.
“I see no changes wake up in the morning and I ask myself is life worth living should I blast myself?” Now you know what was going through Tupac’s mind when thinking this. I will leave this on a note from Tupac, “It’s time for us as people to start making some changes. Let’s change the way we eat, let’s change the way we live, and let’s change the way we treat each other…” Now are you ready to make some “Changes”?

Beauty Commercial

The first commercial, being a girl who starts out just a normal average girl with her own style. Distracting hair, a little acne, not really skinny, but not fat either; those are the first things i noticed about the lady. Then as time goes by she is gets her hair re-done, eyebrows plucked, and make-up on. This apparently wasn't good enough for the company. They then had to put her picture on the computer and photo shop it; make her neck longer, eyes bigger, smile prettier. Nothing ever seems to be good enough for anyone anymore. All magazine, billboards, posters, etc. always seem to have the skinniest ladies and the best looking men. Yeah that's cool, but what ever happened to the average person. I am sick of seeing a clothes magazine with some beautiful, tall, skinny, tan girl wearing the clothes. Sure I think its cute on her, but how will I know what it looks like on me, an average sized girl, that cant just be photo-shopped into the outfit! People try to hard to be the person in the magazine or on the billboard. It's not just girls either, its guys to. They are starting to harm there bodies to be that one person. No one really takes the time to realize the photo shop that was done. Girls are becoming anorexic, boys are taking steroids. It's not just that though, we can try to stop this. People are harsh now-a-days. Be honest, most peoples first thought if they see a obese person isn't, "Oh wow! I bet they are great on the inside!" It's more like, "Oh wow! Maybe they should lay off the donuts!" Yeah maybe an obese person can fix themselves in a healthy way and go on a healthy diet to change how they look on the outside, but you need to stop and take a minute to get to know the inside. Just like they always say "You can't judge a book by its cover!" We know that we all want to be that amazing looking movie star, but if we were all like that then everyone would look the same! It would be boring! Sure we can go tanning, work out, get plastic surgery, but lets get back to reality people! Just face it, no one is perfect!