Hey everyone, this is my 1st blog post, so here goes nothing. The 1st song I decided to blog about is Live Your Life by T.I. featuring Rihanna. This song is off of T.I’s 2008 album Paper Trail. The lyrics can be found here. You may recognize the Numa Numa song sampled in the song.
Analyses
The song begins with T.I giving a shout out to the soldiers in Iraq. He then goes on and states that you should be thankful for the life you have, and not worry about the things you don’t have.
Chorus– In the chorus Rihanna sings about aspiring to be someone successful. To get to where you want to get, you just have to live your life, and go after the money.
Verse 1– In this verse T.I. is describing how he’s successful and how he feels about his success and his “haters” (critics). He starts out talking about his haters and how he ignores them, but still loves them. That’s because the haters he’s talking about are people from the hood, and he believes that he helped some of them to get their success. He then talks about the fact that he used to be where they’re at, and he remembers where he came from. He didn’t change just because of the success, and he’s going to use his success to give back and bring a positive message to the hood.(“Now I could make ’em put the K’s away.”) K = AK47 rifle.
Verse 2– This verse sees Tip talking about how he feels about the rap game. He’s saying that a lot of things in the game are messed up right now. He’s successful because he spits intelligent lines, and other rappers are being fake and worrying about beef, and all the material things that they have. They have lost sight of what they were aspiring to and aren’t really happy anymore with what they have.
Rihanna then concludes by saying that she’s successful and she’s going to stay successful. So if you want to get like her, then just keep your mind on the money, keep climbing to the top, and live your life.
The Rap Up
So I think it’s easy to see that the message of this song is to live your life. Its basically saying don’t let anyone bring you down and aspire for great things. When the song says you steady chasin’ that paper, or money, it really means chase your dreams. Let’s face it, success=money these days and therefore chasing your dreams is going to get you the money. This song has a very positive message. It’s kind of an anthem for anyone inspiring to greatness. I know personally when I listen to the lyrics of this song, I think yea, I’m going to make it. I’m going to be that successful one day, and can’t nobody stop me.
Now admittedly this was a very easy song to take a positive message from. But I will write about “gangster” rap songs that if interpreted in the right way, can have good messages too. Stay tuned. Deuces.
Rappin' Up Rap 