“Changes”

I decided to focus my capstone project on Tupac Shakur and how his work created a social consciousness that continues to be influential to this day. For this blog post, I want to discuss his song “Changes,” and specifically the songs references to poverty as well as the effects it has for many black people in the United States.

“Changes” is no doubt one of Tupac Shakur’s most famous songs. It was released in 1998 and became a hit all over the world. The song uses lines from Tupac’s song “I Wonder If Heaven Got a Ghetto,” which was released in 1997 and contains a powerful message about racism. “Changes” also samples Bruce Hornsby’s 1986 hit “The Way It Is,” which deals with the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and the need to combat racial injustice. These aspects of the song alone set the tone for its powerful and inspirational message. “Changes” makes references to the war on drugs, police brutality against black people, racism, the vicious cycle of poverty for black people in the United States as well as the lack of opportunity to break that cycle.

Within the first lines of the song “Changes,” Tupac addresses the relationship between race and poverty as well as the negative effects of this. He says, “I’m tired of bein’ poor and even worse I’m black, my stomach hurts, so I’m looking for a purse to snatch.” These lyrics demonstrate how many black people in the United States live in poverty and aren’t given the same opportunities for survival. Unfortunately, this results in people resorting to crime just to get by. He makes this point again a few times throughout the song, first when he says, “Give the crack to the kids, who the hell cares? One less hungry mouth on the welfare.” Then later in the song he says, “You gotta operate the easy way, ‘I made a G today,’ but you made it in a sleazy way, sellin’ crack to the kid, ‘I gotta get paid,’ well hey, that’s the way it is.” Unfortunately, that is the way it is for many black people in the United States but due to racial inequality and systemic racism there isn’t much they can do about it. According to an article on Brookings.com, fifty-one percent of black Americans born into the lowest fifth of the earnings distribution remain there at age forty. The article also describes how human social networks connect to economic opportunity and success; it says, “Family-and-friends segregation feeds job and income inequality. That in turn feeds neighborhood and school segregation. That then leaves some kids less likely to receive a quality education and escape from the cycle,” (Brookings.com). I thought this added to the point Tupac makes in the song “Changes” as well as the argument that racism in society restricts black people from finding lucrative economic opportunities. It is hard to break the cycle of poverty when a person is born at the bottom and doesn’t know anything else the bottom. In the song, Tupac raps, “Instead of a war on poverty, they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me, and I ain’t never did a crime I ain’t have to do.” These lyrics are a powerful reflection of the perpetuation of poverty within black communities in the United States.

Tupac once said, ““My inspiration for writing music is like Don McLean did when he did “American Pie” or “Vincent”. Lorraine Hansberry with “A Raisin in the Sun”. Like Shakespeare when he does his thing, like deep stories, raw human needs. I’m trying to think of a good analogy. It’s like, you’ve got the Vietnam War, and because you had reporters showing us pictures of the war at home, that’s what made the war end, or that shit would have lasted longer. If no one knew what was going on we would have thought, they were just dying valiantly in some beautiful way. But because we saw the horror, that’s what made us stop the war. So, I thought, that’s what I’m going to do as an artist, as a rapper. I’m gonna show the most graphic details of what I see in my community and hopefully they’ll stop it quick. I’ve seen all of that– the crack babies, what we had to go through, losing everything, being poor, and getting beat down. All of that. Being the person, I am, I said no no no no. I’m changing this,” (Tupac: Resurrection).  He used his music to create a social consciousness and highlight different issues. This is shown in the song “Changes” through his portrayal of poverty and the hardships that come with it.

Works Cited:

Ross, Janell. “Black Unemployment Driven By White America’s Favors For Friends.” Black Voices, 2013, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-unemployment-nancy-ditomaso_n_2974805. Accessed 20 November 2019.

Rodrigue, Edward. “Five Bleak Facts on Black Opportunity.” Social Mobility, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2015/01/15/five-bleak-facts-on-black-opportunity/. Accessed 20 November 2019.