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In “Leve-Toi et Rap” MC Solaar (Claude Honoré M’Barali) paints a detailed picture of his life and experience of France as a black man of African roots. He explains how his mother enforced his focus in school. “My mother cleans hospitals/She knows that knowledge will be my only ally” “Then I spent days in libraries”. Growing up in France, he explains what it was like “At that time in the middle of Paris there were skinheads” “Get me into a gang? Are you crazy or wack?” M’Barali is wary of the violence and hate he sees around him. “Then trip to Egypt, French School of Cairo/To perfect my flow and my vocabulary/There I learned humility, the fear of cartridges/Pure sniper style camouflage paw-mouche" “Mafia movies made me suspicious” He also criticizes the bravado and showmanship he sees in his life contrary to some themes of hip-hop culture “I walk low profile, don't show off any jewelry/"You're worth more than a brand" Mamadou told me.”

Throughout this song MC Solaar is critical of the culture around him that promotes materialism, violence, and racism. He finds his own confidence in his own quirks and unique style “They held a grudge against me because I had what they wanted/A style that was my own and the verb in the perfect tense.” Ultimately, he takes pride in the things that define his life like his education, his vocabulary, his flow, and his humility. At Solaar’s time, Paris was experiencing racial violence, which proved directly dangerous to him as a Senegalese immigrant of a working family. His genuine interest in learning both in his education but also as a human being helped to inform him of his worldview at a time when he didn’t always feel at home.

Growing up in a place that often threatened his individuality, MC Solaar finds solace in his talent to make music “Maybe because one day Jesus told me: ‘go ahead get up and rap.”

In “Ghora” Blitzkrieg’s verse comes at direct odds with Roach Killa’s. Each of Roach Killa’s bars inserts a different gun entendre or reference. “Pistol in my waistline” “ready for war” “I’m just loaded I’m strapped” “Clap these motherfuckers” “fill their body with gunshots”. The hook of the song is punctuated by references to AK47s, and gunshot sounds and the video sees the rappers pointing finger guns at the camera. Basically, the concept of the song is based around very direct, and unsubtle gun references.

However, when Blitzkrieg begins his section, he flips the themes on their head. “I spit em rhymes like bullets call me M16/I’m whacktos intolerant allergic to bullshit/I heard you pack a toast, and you let off a full clip/Ya right, we don’t believe you/Tell lies to gain a rep man you got some issues” Immediately, Blitzkrieg confronts Roach Killas verse accusing him of lying for street cred. He rips off his own gun entendre and then tells Roach Killa that he sees right through his bullshit. Later he continues, “I don’t shoot guns don’t get it twisted kid/It’s a metaphor meaning all the rhymes I spit/And I got so many rhymes I can fill up a clip.” Now, all of a sudden, he tells the audience very clearly that gun references do not hold real meaning and explains exactly what his intention is. In a way he now gives new meaning to Roach Killa’s bars and adds complexity to the thesis of the song. He ends his verse with the line “My rhymes are my bullets, and my tongue is my gun.” Full circle, we end back on a gun metaphor and the song is complete.

Through his verse, Blitzkrieg assigns power to verse and words, diminishing the physical power and mental anxiety of guns. Roach Killa began the song by leaning into his MC name, an urban killer of pests, and tries to embody the machismo and toughness that comes with it. Through Blitzkrieg’s section, a whole new layer of the mindset is revealed, and the weight is shifted from the fear of guns to a recognition of the importance of words, warning Roach Killa to choose his wisely.

In My Dungeon Shook Baldwin writes an open letter to his nephew who is named after him. He is writing to explain to James how to handle his fellow Americans and particularly white Americans. He says that these ‘countrymen’ have given James conditions for life that are uncomfortable and unfair. He says, “that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.” This poetic description of systemic racism is what Baldwin establishes first.

He goes on to describe his own father (his nephew’s grandfather) who was a miserable man, “he was defeated long before he died because, at the bottom of his heart, he really believed what white people said about him.” Baldwin tells this story as a cautionary tale and ties his thought back to systemic racism when he tells James, “You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a ******.”

Baldwin then reaches the main claim of his letter which is that the goal of integration is to eliminate the danger of systemic racism through acceptance of one another. This letter comes at a time when the civil rights movement is in full effect with integration of black people and elimination of segregation as the goal. Baldwin says that black people, specifically James, must learn to accept white people with love because they are trapped in a world that they do not understand. White people are consumed by their racist world and trapped by a history that they do not understand. Baldwin argues that they must be challenged by radical acceptance in order to break the cycle of fear and hate.

“I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man's definitions.” Baldwin is telling his nephew that the only way to break free of the dangers of systemic racism and achieve integration is to challenge the preconceived expectations of white people. By accepting them with love, the hate can no longer perpetuate.

White people are trapped because of their own racism, Baldwin argues. Successful integration will allow white people to break free from their own biases and racist ideas that trap them. In this way, white people’s freedom from their own ideas is linked to black people’s freedom from oppression.

Empire Empire showcases frustration with imperial history. The eerie beat seems to reflect the sinister presence of imperial power as the singer discusses his culture as a "voodoo image". He lays down at the feet of the "colonial crown" and declares "I've got empire, empire; temper, temper". The songs anger spills over as the angsty and abrasive instrumental gives way to raging yells in the final section. It's an emotionally charged track that expresses the generational unrest of imperial and colonial rule in a potent musical performance.
The line 'spread power with words' open 'Debris' which has the tone of a musical manifesto. The frontman points to 'the consequences of your global pillage' speaking to England as a world power and says to the colonial empire that 'when the truth is uncovered and the story's been told/you won't be able to look me in the face'. Continuing the prosecution of Great Britain, the second to last verse stories the guilty charges 'You treated my mother's land/Just like one big plantation/You did this to the African/You did this to the Asian/Famine was caused not by god but taxation/The fruits of our labour were used to build your nation'. The evils of imperialism are fully declared, and the colonial angst from 'Empire Empire' returns. 'Yes our underdevelopment was caused by your abuse' an MC repeats as a spacey instrumental plays. The song ends with a confident resistance as the MC returns to the first words of the song 'we are gonna, spread power with words'.

Rana's piece is profound in its description of racism's origin. He describes a comprehensive history of racial prejudice as inextricably tied to religion. He explains that hostility by European christians towards Jews and Muslims was a "a rehearsal for racial formation". Elaborating on this point, he says, "early sources of racism derived from competing imperial projects based in religious ideology." The catholic church was one of the driving forces of these religious divisions with their concept of "limpieza de sangre" (purity of blood) which essentially acted as a racial hierarchy.

Through the process of colonization, the motivation of religious difference and correction became commonplace as these barriers became politically entrenched and culturally ingrained. As this history progressed, the barriers between race, religion, and heritage were increasingly breached and the conceptions of each of them mixed. Terms became conflated and religious prejudice became xenophobia and then racism and vice versa. "Hindu", "Arab", "Syrian", and "Oriental" all came to carry prejudiced meanings beyond their original definitions.

The conflation of separate prejudices is the root of the connection between Islamophobia and racism. However, according to Rana, some conflation was more intentional. He describes that after the Christian Crusades, the Moorish conflicts, and the discovery of the new world had established religious tensions, Europeans were primed for the growth of economy and power through colonialism. As Rana says, “For European capitalism to expand, a religious other had to be created in Islamic rivals: the Turks and the Moors.” This expands on the idea that colonialism was driven by concepts of religious difference and when the Europeans established a firm presence in the Americas, it was Muslim othering that was applied onto American natives which developed the racism that still exists today.

Overall, Rana’s piece describes why throughout history, Islamophobia and racism are intricately entwined, neither existing without the other. Today, Rana explains, racism has evolved beyond religious ties in some ways with the influence of eugenics, and the biological basis of discrimination. However, the connection of these concepts is crucial to their history.

In "The Blacker The Berry" Kendrick showcases a deep and profound processing of emotion. The narrative he explains is not linear, nor is it resolved, it is an expression of where he has come to in the moment of the song. There is a cycle of hatred that is continually referenced throughout the track. "I know you hate me don't you", "This plot is bigger than me, it's generational hatred", "I know you hate me just as much as you hate yourself". Here, Kendrick comes to terms with the hate and disadvantage he's received from the world identifying that hate has to come from somewhere, recognizing an internal hatred. He elaborates on the psychological experience of growing up in the U.S. as a black man "I mean it's evident that I'm irrelevant to society/That's what you're telling me penitentiary would only hire me/Curse me til I'm dead, church me with your fake prophesizing/That imma be just another slave in my head." The hate he faces is evidence of the disadvantage he deals with and eventually this hate is internalized until it is in his own head and perhaps becomes self-hatred.

Later in the verse he identifies the interesting tension of these battling hatreds, "I know you hate me just as much as you hate yourself/Jealous of my wisdom and cards I dealt/Watchin' me as I pull up, fill up my tank, then peel out/Muscle cars like pull-ups, show you what these big wheels 'bout, ah." The historical hate he discusses, born out of self hate, has become present-day jealousy, a pissing contest of big fast cars, the language of competition that America speaks. The person he refers to is not totally clear, but I think that is intentional. The cycle of hate is not predictable, it is complex and ingrained, hate comes from somewhere and has to go somewhere, here Kendrick describes this intricate behavior of hate.

We see the internal relationship with hate when he raps on his own stereotypes "My hair is nappy, my dick is big, my nose is round and wide" "I want you to recognize that I'm a proud monkey", by doing so, I think Kendrick reckons with the real angst people experience when dangerous stereotypes are internalized. He owns the stereotypes, and recognizes their very real impact on his lived experience and also his psyche. Kendrick goes on to reflect on the things he feels guilty for and where his hatred has spilled over. "You sabotage my community, makin' a killin'/You made me a killer, emancipation of a real *****", "So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street/When gang-banging make me kill a ***** blacker than me?/Hypocrite!" Kendrick now sees the cycle very clearly, his community was sabotaged and taken advantage of and his life was made more difficult, as a result it made him into "a killer." This thought is expanded on by the final line of the song, his reflection on Trayvon Martin's death recognizes the pain he has caused his own community. By owning this guilt, Kendrick concludes his deep processing. The experience of black people in America which Kendrick describes throughout the song showcases the true danger of hate, because of the cycle it creates.

Maimouna Youssef’s “Tell My Story” describes, in detail, Youssef’s experience of growing up half-black and half-indigenous. This split caused an identity crisis which is demonstrated by the explanation of Youssef’s relationship with her hair. She describes asking her grandma of indigenous origin “Why don’t I look like you?” and her grandma trying to “brush the black out” of her kinky hair. She describes the insecurities these struggles gave her and declares that “Self-hatred and white supremacy are quite the pair”

Both songs describe the deeply complex mental experiences of people of color growing up a society that does not understand their identities.