History rears its ugly head
Last fall, rapper Young Jeezy released an album entitled “The Recession.” I’m not the biggest Young Jeezy fan, but I appreciate his music. One of my favorite songs off this album is called “Circulate.”
What makes this song stand out to me is the sample it uses in the production. After doing some research, I found that the song sampled Billy Paul’s “Let the Dollar Circulate.”
What caught my attention while listening to Paul’s song was that majority of the lyrics still ring true to our time even though the song was released on Paul’s 1975 album “When Love is New.”
The lyrics touched on loose tongues of politicians, cities losing money, unemployment and the ineptitude of school systems. To understand the song you have to hear it for yourself, but I’ve taken the time to list some of the lyrics that correlate with some of today’s issues.
“Inflation gettin’ higher/ makes it hard on the buyer/ Unemployment on the rise”
Currently the United States isn’t facing an inflation problem but according the uk.reuters.com the efforts being taken to get the U.S. out the recession could lead to possible inflation. The article says that with the $800 billion dollar stimulus package, along with interest rates being lowered to combat the recession, it is “likely to give a long-term lift to commodities that could eventually inflate prices for consumer and producer goods.”
An article done by the St. Louis Business Journal stated that the U.S. unemployment rate is at 25-year high. The article also says that “a total of 5.1 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007.”
“City with millions goin’ broke/ industry pollutin’ the air with smoke/ Politicians talkin’ crazy”
That lyric directly relates to the amount of jobs that have been lost in Ohio. When the General Motors plant in Moraine closed in December 2008 approximately 1,080 workers lost their jobs, according to the Chicago Daily Herald.
For the past few years global warming has been a major issue that has been debated on. Global warming is said to be caused by different forms of pollution, including carbon dioxide emitted from cars, planes, and buildings, as well as other causes, according to ecobridge.org. President Barack Obama proposed a budget of $10.5 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency to help improve the environment.
Obama recently caused some controversy over his joke about his bowling skills that referenced the Special Olympics on “The Tonight Show.” Sen. John McCain took a lot of flack when he referred to Obama as “that one” during a presidential debate.
“Schools are cryin’ too/ they can’t do the job they want to do/ we can go to the moon and float in space”
The U.S. education system has been constantly criticized. Many schools are underfunded and under staffed. HBO produced a documentary about Frederick Douglass High School, located in the inner city of Baltimore, where most teachers aren’t properly certified and even the qualified teachers don’t have the necessary resources to properly teach the students.
America prides itself on heading the frontier of all things whether it’s putting a man on the moon or these incredible advances in technology, but who needs a time machine if history continually repeats itself.
In 2009, the U.S. is doing the same things we were doing 34 years ago. The people making the decisions may have changed but the problems haven’t.
I guess it’s like Mark Twain said, “It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.”