All posts by Natalie

Natalie’s Audible Artifact

The song I’ve chosen for the assignment is “Nikki” by Logic. In the song, Logic talks about his addiction to nicotine. He tries to overcome his addiction, but it hardly works out as he constantly mentions that he’s “a slave to the nicotine”. Logic feels it in his lungs, in his veins and admits that it’s an unhealthy addiction, “I hate that I need you, Nikki.” He begins to question what kind of man he is to allow this drug to consume his life, “Every day, I wonder who I am / Who will I be? Where will I go?” Aware of where this path of addiction will lead him, Logic wants to desperately let go but nicotine is everything that he craves. This reminded of Samad’s relationship with Poppy Burt-Jones. Samad wants to be a man of his religion but is held back by his sexual desire for Poppy. Samad brings up that he’s never felt such desire in the past ten years and now his every waking thought is consumed by her. He commits acts that aren’t exactly praised by Allah such as masturbation and drinking. Samad is also aware that these actions don’t make him the man he wants to be which leads to a pang of weighing guilt over him. He tries to justify his actions by making deals with his God, giving up masturbation to drink and/or fasting when he’d masturbate to make the playing field even, one sin being canceled out by the other action. Even with Samad’s deals and mantra’s, to the pure all things are pure, he continues to be tortured by his actions but shows no signs of stopping.

Natalie’s Mixtape Blog

I choose “BIG LOVE” by The Black Eyed Peas. I remember the first time I watched the music video was last year and since then it stuck by me. It was more of a short film than a music video which helped spread their message even further and bring it to life. The film depicts a school shooting and some situations involving Border Patrol. The song starts off with the lyric “A day in a life of a kid in America”, it brings you along to someone else’s reality or even our own. There is an included warning before the video that stated “No kid should have to live through what you are about to see”, but sadly the reality is that kids do live through what was shown. In 2018, there were 24 school shootings and over 300 mass shooting all over America. In that same year, thousands of children were taken from their families under Trump’s zero tolerance policy. During the first verse sung by will.i.am, he says “Our leaders are embarrassing” which I think refers to Donald Trump being as he is the President of America and a very irritating person overall. Will.i.am then goes on to sing “Everybody’s following Ain’t nobody leading”, I think he includes this because nowadays there are very few people trying to make change happen within America or their society and with social media just increasing with popularity it’s very easy to follow along to what others are doing; monkey-see-monkey-do. He ends the verse with “ People lovin’ guns more than kids is the season And they say the reason is to protect their freedom But we don’t believe ’em”. The first lyric reminded me of when the movement March For Our Lives for started up there were criticisms coming from news anchors or adults on twitter calling it stupid or trying to belittle the cause. The second lyric I believe is the main pro-gun argument, that people have the right to bear arms according to the Second Amendment in order to protect themselves while the third lyric is the other side that doesn’t agree. The kids throughout the film are primarily singing the chorus being “’Cause all that we are All that we’re made of Is big, big love”. You’ll see kids running and crying, but despite all the chaos they continue to sing. The song acts as an anthem by bringing people together while still clinging onto hope and love for not just themselves, but for each other. One of the last messages in the video read “Speak up for those who can’t” and a link to a website that can direct you to the March For Our Lives and Families Belong Together websites. It’s a very powerful quote to end on and gave me a mission to try and do just that. The short film was daring but very much needed in order to spread several messages of awareness, perspective, and love.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPmcLzgnlo8