“Inner City Blues” The Song/Story of Black Reality
Accompanied by its blues-funk and soulful tenderness, you’re immediately drawn into the dark world of the Inner City. The intoxicating instrumentation makes it hard to engage with the lyrics at first, but Gaye drops jewels line by line. Originally written by Marvin Gaye and James Nyx Jr., the two song-writers pinned a song about the hardships and shortcomings they saw around their communities.
Inner City Blues
One of the opening lines, ‘Rockets, moon shots spend it on the have nots’ isn’t just a surfaced statement. The meaning is deeper. Americas government can find millions of dollars to send people to space but cant find proper funding for black communities.
The chorus of the song is Gaye’s realization of all thats going on around him. The conditions are so unbearable it could make one want to scream from the frustration. He echoes the apprehension and sorrow black Americans felt then and now.
Gaye also speaks about financial problems including inflation, bills piling up, and how he can’t even pay his own taxes. Now let’s not get started on the 40 acres, a mule, and the reparations Black America is owed. We can save that for another day.
With Americas economy always being on the rocks the black community always gets the worst end of the deal. We have underfunded schools and housing, systemic racism has set black people up for failure since the beginning. The oppressor released us from bondage after 400 years with mostly nothing to build from, but we still proved resilience.
Police Brutality
As a result of “freedom from slavery” the Jim Crow Laws were put into play. These mandated laws separated black and white people from schools, restrooms, water fountains, and restaurants. The police administered excessive force and brutality to black people who they felt broke or violated these laws.
In Gayes’s closing lines he sings “Crime is increasing, trigger happy policing, panic is spreading.” This song was released 49 years ago, police are still trigger happy and killing us with no punishment or remorse. Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd were all recently murdered by police this year, Black America will be hard and we will not allow history to repeat itself.
“Inner City Blues” isn’t just a classic Marvin Gaye song that makes you groove. It is the ugly truth of black America made into a beautiful piece of art for generations of black people to be heard.