this as my crew sips on a cocktail like
that cruise flick like clockwork
I try my luck now I’m sad enough shut
dice dreams of the good life hanging by
it but like dudes working for Suge
Knight let’s start our talk today with a
little poll if you were feeling that
track with your body like if you were
nodding your head along to the beat or
tapping your toes can you raise your
hand you raise your hand if you were
feeling that track great ok can you keep
your hand up if you were also tuned into
the lyrics of that verse like if I asked
you to repeat back a clever simile or a
bit of figurative language or just a
memorable part you could you could
recite that back to me you were tuned
into the lyrics perfect
that difference forms the basis of our
time together today I believe there are
two types of people in the world people
that casually listen and those that
really hear that are tuned in to the
music we listen to every day and what
category we fall into can have a
profound impact on our social lives our
mental health and our worldview on the
surface listening and hearing might seem
the same but there’s a difference and
this difference was best articulated in
the 1992 cinematic masterpiece white men
can’t jump
by director ron shelton which also could
be an allegory for my skills on the
basketball court but that’s probably a
different conversation in the film
Woody Harrelson plays a character named
Billy and Wesley Snipes plays a
character named Sidney and they are
riding down the road listening to Jimi
Hendrix classic rock ballad Purple Haze
in Billy’s car and as Billy air guitars
the famous licks of the of the song and
stumbles across the lyrics Sidney quips
I know you can listen to Jimmy but can
you hear Jimmy he implores Harrelson’s
character to go deeper to connect to the
soul of the song through the lyrics our
goal in the next 10 minutes is to travel
further across this continuum towards a
more tuned in collective of music lovers
the impact of this subtle shift might
surprise you the first and perhaps most
important reason to tune in to the
lyrics of the songs we listened to every
day is not looking stupid in front of
your friends your colleagues and maybe
even your children a 2014 poll published
in The Telegraph newspaper found that
the songs that are often misquoted and
in fact most misquoted are also some of
the most famous songs the songs that we
sing along to every day one example
would be Abbas dancing queen see that
girl watch her scream kicking the
dancing queen
the real lyrics here in green are much
less brutal than that Queens 1977 hit we
will rock you you got mud on your face
big disgrace kickin your cat all over
the place these misheard lyrics could be
an affront to animal lovers everywhere
and the Jimi Hendrix track from the
white men can’t jump seen actin funny
but I don’t know why excuse me while I
kiss this guy two very different
sentiments expressed here along the same
vein but perhaps on a deeper level some
of the most popular songs we listen to
contain lyrics that might surprise you
the 71 rock classic brown sugar by the
Rolling Stones which was playing during
the break if you caught it contains this
verse Gold Coast slave ship bound for
cotton fields sold in a market down in
New Orleans scarred old slaver knows
he’s doing all right here him whip the
women just around midnight
brown sugar how come you taste so good
brown sugar just like a young girl
should how many times have we listened
to this song and heard these lyrics and
not realize the sentiments that they
possess another more recent example that
was also plain during the break is the
2010 global phenomenon Pumped Up Kicks
by Foster the People this is a song
about a student that plans and carry
outta school shooting and this fact
became evident to me last year in this
very space when that song was
accidentally played as exit music during
one of our assemblies and as I looked up
into the crowd worried about the message
we were sending to 450 students their
parents and teachers all I saw were four
hundred and fifty teenagers dancing
along nodding their heads singing the
chorus or just completely oblivious
these cases illustrate the importance of
really tuning in to the music we listen
to
less we support perspectives that are
dangerous or downright shocking I’m a
lover of hip-hop music and I often hear
criticisms of this genre that it’s about
bass bling misogyny and violence but I
believe these perspectives are
promulgated by those that listen but
don’t really hear it so what I’d like to
do during our time together is I’d like
to illustrate the brilliance of hip-hop
by taking a moment to deconstruct the
verse we started our time with the
rapper that was laying down that verse
his name’s shad he’s a Canadian rapper
and I want to just quickly thank him for
giving me permission to use his songs
today so let’s jump into this musical
genius here he starts with just for my
who kid DJ’s this is DJ whoo kid he’s an
actual DJ and he’s known you can kind of
tell by the top of his Run DMC hoodie
he’s known for pulling out samples and
loops out of 80s and early 90s hip-hop
to use today so he says this is for my
whoo kid DJ’s who dig and here he uses
kind of a double entendre he’s saying
who dig like I dig it I understand it
it’s cool and DJ’s who dig for records
in crates so this is from my who kid
DJ’s who dig pulling out wax in this
case he’s referring to Records a slang
term for records in hip-hop and probably
other genres is wack so he says this is
from my who kid DJ’s who dig pulling out
wax then he uses kind of a gross simile
like
you tips pulling out wax like q-tips but
he uses it as a bridge to tie in finding
loops that sick as mr. q-tips describing
q-tip who’s one of the founding members
of the classic hip hop group A Tribe
Called Quest oh he says this is from my
hook here deejays who dig pulling out
wax like q-tips finding loops that sick
as mr. q-tip here he says I’m the new
Bismarck this kids stupid he’s referring
to biz markie who’s known as the Clown
Prince of hip-hop his raps are always
very funny and so he’s saying he’s the
new Bismarck this is shad right here
he’s saying this kids stupid like this
kids off the wall he doesn’t mean
unintelligent he just means outside of
the box this kids stupid then he says I
spit sharp like toothpicks and here he
uses the term spit as a slang term for
rap so basically saying I spit sharp
means that I’m a good rapper how
sharpened my raps sharp like toothpicks
then he ties it into on an all-inclusive
cruise ship as my crew sips and here he
uses the word crew as a double entendre
as then the crew on a cruise ship that
might serve you drinks and my crew like
my friends my people so he says the new
Bismarck this kids stupid spit sharp
like toothpicks on an all-inclusive
cruise ship as my crew sits on the
cocktail like that cruise fling this is
probably the most genius line of the
song he says as my crew sips on a
cocktail so he’s tying it back to the
cruise ship and the toothpicks he’s like
as my cruise ships on my cruise ships on
a cocktail like that cruise flick
referring to the film cocktail with Tom
Cruise like clockwork he is referring to
the film Clockwork Orange by Stanley
Kubrick like clockwork nah the other
Kubrick Eyes Wide Shut which is a
Kubrick film that Tom Cruise stars then
as well and then he finishes it off with
a line from dr. Strangelove bye bye buck
which Stanley Kubrick also directed as
my crew sips on
tale-like the cruise flick like
clockwork now the other Kubrick Eyes
now this one’s for my real hip-hop heads
in the audience this is a good one okay
he says he’s all in the game all in
referring to like in poker when you put
all your chips in you’re completely
committed to the game in this case the
game is the rap game so he’s all in the
game he wants to try his luck okay
he’s got dreams of the good life he’s
living off shook dice so he’s back to
the idea of dice in the game but then he
really takes it to the next level
I think English teachers will appreciate
this as well he says I’m hanging by a
foot in this case the foot he’s
referring to is not the foot on your
feet it’s a foot which is a measure of
rhythm
you might remember it from your study of
sonnets and Shakespeare it’s actually
one half of an I am it is the way that
poets can measure rhythm so he says it’s
hanging by a foot meaning that the only
way he’s able to stay in the rap game is
his ability to write rhymes he’s hanging
by a foot like dudes working for Suge
Knight a Suge Knight was a CEO of Death
Row Records if you know dr. Dre Snoop
Dogg Tupac the beginning of gangster rap
on the west coast and you might have
seen the recent film Straight Outta
Compton Suge Knight once held Vanilla
Ice off of a balcony by his feet to
store record royalties from him in the
early 90s so he says he’s hanging by a
foot like dudes working for Suge Knight
it is lyrical genius consider the sheer
volume of this lyrical genius in music
we listen to every day if just this
snippet of a relatively lesser known
song has this level of clever references
figurative language and brilliant
wordplay if we’re not tuned in we’re
missing out
Matt Daniels a visual data guru applied
a sampling technique called token
analysis what Matt did is he took the
first 35,000 words that XI William
Shakespeare wrote in his plays he
actually took the first seven plays in
the first 5,000 words out of each just
to make sure
he got a nice sample then he took the
first 35,000 words of Herman Melville’s
classic Moby Dick in those samples
he found that Shakespeare had about 5000
original words 5,000 different words and
Melville had about six thousand and then
Daniels took about a hundred rappers and
took the first 35,000 lyrics they wrote
and measured against Shakespeare and
Melville and what he found was that
there are about 20 to 25 rappers about
1/4 of that sample that have the same
level of original wordplay and lyrical
complexity as Shakespeare and Melville
as the data illustrates if we’re not
tuning in we’re missing a lyrical
education again to the Masters of prose
and fiction that we learn about in
school the brain research on tuning into
lyrics is also very interesting our
long-term memories are stored in a part
of the brain called the hippocampus and
it’s influenced by proper maintenance of
our working memory
a recent Vanderbilt University study
found a clear link between attention to
detail and improved working memory the
implications being that those that tune
into lyrics are flexing their working
memory and thus improve their ability to
store long term memories both in musical
and in other contexts also a team of
researchers from Leipzig recently found
that simply listening to the songs we
listen to all the time without really
tuning in caused our neurons to process
the same stimulus over and over again
this caused our neural pathways to
decrease in their responsiveness over
time actually processing the lyrics
however activated more complex pathways
in different parts of our brain in these
ways focusing on lyrics can actually
improve your brains ability to tune in
to the detail around you everyday and
remember it as Rick Hanson States in his
book Buddha brain attention is knowing
or being with something without trying
to change it this is something that does
not usually come naturally or
automatically too
our attention is filled with judgment
and distraction all the time I would
like to invite you to practice tuning in
and focusing on the detail of the music
you love as Sandler’s research suggests
simply practicing simply tuning in and
focusing our attention to lyrics can
strengthen our neural pathways
now while tuning into lyrics can help us
avoid social faux pas and expand our
vocabulary and maybe even improve the
way our brains work the stakes might be
higher than that I wonder if the idea of
listening without really hearing is a
metaphor for our society today are we
collectively missing out on our nuanced
reality and the challenges and
opportunities we face as a species
because we’re mindlessly dancing along
to the beat and chiming out the chorus
instead of making an effort to truly
engage with the detail and complexity of
our times are we tuning out instead of
tuning in are we kicking our cat all
over the place into oblivion the very
next time you put on your headphones I
invite you to do more than listen tune
into the lyrics this might not only rock
your world but it may change ours for
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]