Black Star’s classic single Respiration deals with city life, both in New York, as told my Mos Def and Talib Kweli, and in Chicago, as told by Common. Like the other classics on …Are Black Star, Respiration was produced by Hi-Tek using a sample from The Fox, by Don Randi.
Context
Within the album
The track follows Yo Yeah on the record, a somewhat odd J Rawls interlude which concludes with some spoken words from an older gentleman:
“3:30 in the morning with not a soul in sight / We sat four deep at a traffic light / Talking about how dumb and brainwashed some of our brothers and sisters are / While we waited for a green light to tell us when to go”
I normally wouldn’t talk about the previous song in a song analysis, but in this case, I think how it sets off the first 9 tracks from the last 3 makes it function somewhat like an intro, funneling the focus of the album down from broad politicized themes of pan-Africanism, black unity, and nonviolence down to explication of personal experience. I’m not sure how well Thieves In The Night fits in with this ‘funnel’-reading, but for the purposes of this essay I’m just gonna kinda hand-wave that away.
The gentleman in Yo Yeah brings ironic attention to a division in the black community, between the older generations and the youth. He complains that the youth are dumb and brainwashed, while waiting for a light at an empty intersection: a gesture that could perhaps only be motivated by desire to conform to the laws of society, for better or for worse. I feel a comparison here between this older gentleman and Hendrix’ “white collar conservative”: both illustrate different sides of the same generational gap. In Jimi’s, the intent is to widen the gap, inspiring nonconformity in a younger generation. J Rawls’ example does the opposite—it serves to show that the gap might not be as wide as one thinks, instead calling for unity.
Style Wars
Yo Yeah cuts directly to the beginning of Respiration, which opens with a sample from the seminal hip hop film, Style Wars
“What’d you do last night?” / “We did umm, two whole cars It was me, Dez, and Main Three right? And on the first car in small letters it said ‘All you see is..’ and then you know Big, big, you know some block silver letters That said ‘..crime in the city’ right?” / “It just took up the whole car?” / “Yeah yeah, it was a whole car and shit…”
In this clip, Skeme, a pioneer in New York’s graffiti scene, speaks about his piece Crime In The City, pictured above. Like the best vocal samples, Skeme’s poignant words here signify a great deal more than they may initially appear to. In Crime, Skeme has created a double meaning: the piece can be read to mean something like ‘all the city has to offer is crime’, but it can also be read to mean something like ‘when you see the city, you miss the beauty for the crime’.
This double meaning ties directly into the a fundamental struggle of hip-hop culture, and arguably of Black American culture on the whole: perception. If the four pillars of hip hop can be defined, loosely, as an attempt to find and demonstrate beauty in the grittiness of urban life, then this Style Wars scene cuts to the roots: find all the beauty you want, and people will still only see what they’re trying to see.
Hook
Spanish Lady
From the Style Wars sample, the track moves on to the hook, which begins with a woman’s voice: “Escuchela: la ciudad respirando” (which I roughly translate to, ‘Listen to the city, it’s breathing’). I highlight this line, because it’s this idea of the city’s breath, implying an organic living city, that gives the song its name. I wish I knew what her voice was sampled from, ‘cause I’m sure it would be significant, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere.
Rapped Hook
The rest of the hook continues the pulmonary analogy:
So much on my mind that I can’t recline / Blastin’ holes in the night ‘till she bled sunshine / Breathe in, inhale vapors from bright stars that shine / Breathe out, weed smoke retrace the skyline / Heard the bass ride out like an ancient mating call / I can’t take it y’all, I can feel the city breathin’ / Chest heavin’, against the flesh of the evenin’ / Sigh before we die like the last train leavin’
By anthropomorphizing the city like this, it becomes more human. This allows it to have a confused, confusing morality (like the ones humans have), and furthermore it allows the rappers to use the rich language normally reserved for describing people. Mos Def and Talib don’t end up employing that very much, but Common’s verse does.
Mos Def’s Verse
Mos Def’s verse seems somewhat paradoxical: he says a bunch of depressing shit about the city, and then concludes with a kind-of-beautiful image of “the harbor lights which remain in the distance.” In a way, Mos’ whole verse can be synechdocilly represented by his work with the big apple metaphor for New York City. Normally the image implies New York’s deliciousness and sense of wonder, but Mos Def changes the metaphor to bring out negative aspects of apples: it is “shiny”, and “bruised”, and you “could lose your teeth”, and yet it’s still “sweet”. Mos Def would probably argue that such a polarized good-and-bad description is necessary to “describe the inscrutable”.
Talib’s Verse
Look in the skies for God, what you see besides the smog / Is broken dreams flying away on the wings of the obscene
Damn. Nuff said.
But seriously, Talib’s verse plays with feelings of urban desolation and hopelessness. Contrast between dreams and deaths. The perennial grayness of a world where intra-gang success might feel like victory, but who are you really fighting against? “everything is fair / It’s a paradox we call reality”
Common’s Verse
Common’s verse deals with the huge class disparity present in Chicago. The verse employs heavy juxtaposition to bring out this disparity: heaven / hell, project life / “plush homes” (Cabrini / Love Jones), hate / love. When this track was recorded, in 1998, the Cabrini-Green demolition was just beginning)
Commons’ is also the verse that takes the living-breathing-city analogy the farthest, with the line, “knew my friend was gone for good / Threw dirt on the casket, the hurt, I couldn’t mask it.” He seals the deal in the last four lines, switching references from “the city” to “my man”.
It’s deep, I heard the city breathe in its sleep / Of reality I touch, but for me it’s hard to keep / Deep, I heard my man breathe in his sleep / Of reality I touch, but for me it’s hard to keep