W11

City Blues are more close to what I'm familiar with. Even though they come before my time I can draw closer parallels to Black life in America today with these lyrics.
I can only approach this week personally because I am apart of the "us" Bobby "Blue" Bland sings about in Sad Street. The city blues were a modern urbanized soulful and less spririt-ful version of what we sang down in the Mississippi Delta. The blues get deeper as we become more far removed.

I parallel these Blues to the Hip Hop music of my generation. The lyrics we rap today are close to what Black blues musicians sung. Hip Hop is often devalued because of it's so-called derogatory lyrics. But while being devalued audiences fail to contextualize the words of the rhymes. Rappers are coping with todays Black sad streets. When they speak of violence, death, poverty, sickness, drug use, prostitution and all the ills of the Black neighborhood that Bland calls sad street. They are expressively attempting to bring attention to our reality. Through music you can see the evolution of my people (American Negros aka The African American). Because of the inequality and hostility that we have been unwillingly subject to we use the mechanism of music, that has been built into us from the motherland, to deal with whats real. And because of the ruthless reality of our everyday lives we never fail to have our music heard. Ears generation after generation sustain a strange demand to hear and connect with Black music. Sadly most often it is just heard and not understood.