Colors Mixtape
By Hadley Callaway, Caroline Kichler, Alex Maddon, Ibby O’Carroll
Introduction
Today the visual and audible blend together in the world of hip hop, as artists become cultural icons, publish easily accessible music videos, and share their lives with the public through social media. Now, a song is rarely just sound — it is supplemented with visual imagery through a carefully choreographed, expensive music video and looped snippets on the Spotify player.
But this melding of visual and audible started long before the emergence of YouTube, Vevo, and Spotify. Musicians have always developed their soundscapes and lyrics in order to ground the listener in a fuller sonic universe. This mixtape seeks to explore how color motifs are used by various hip-hop artists to convey personal and political statements. The same colors that occupy a painter’s palette add a depth of visual experience to music, allowing an enhanced form of expression impossible when tapping into only one sense.
The emotional connotations of colors are well established in our cultural psyche: green representing jealousy or disgust, blue sadness, red anger, yellow happiness, etc. Yet colors can also be attached to institutions, like the colors of a nation’s flag. The artists we have chosen build off of associations — both expected and unexpected — to provide a common language for story-telling and self-expression.
Our mixtape brings the listener through a multi-sensory hip-hop experience decoding the different meanings behind the shades black and white and the colors yellow, pink, blue, and red. The sonic journey we have mapped out explores gang affiliation, hometown pride, financial insecurity in relationships, femininity, sexuality and pleasure, innocent first love, lack of control, depression, travel, coping with pain through drug use, violent anger, and ends with an exploration of the sadness of injustice.
While listening, we ask the listener to consider how colors play into your identity. How do you use color to conceptualize your emotions? What colors represent the groups or institutions with which you are affiliated? What colors paint the places and people in your memories? Our mixtape provides an enhanced opportunity for self-exploration through the visual and audible, with these hip-hop artists as examples from which the listener may learn.
“Colors” by Ice-T
Colors (1988)
Ice-T’s “Colors” was originally conceived of as the soundtrack to a film of the same name. We selected “Colors” to be the first song in our mixtape not only because of its pertinent title, but also because it introduces some of themes we will discuss in relation to the other songs. As Ice-T says in the interlude before the beat, “Let’s do this.”
The common time beat opens with the repetition of the word “color.” In the context of Ice-T’s hometown, color is indicative of one’s gang affiliation. Much like countries or sports teams, gangsters wear colored attire to signify their membership. The first two words he raps are “I am,” which connects the idea of one’s color to one’s identity. This connection is deeply personal to Ice-T, “My colors, my honor, my colors, my all.” Ice-T, however, places himself above boundary of “Red or Blue, Cuz or Blood.” He establishes himself as a higher authority on gangs, “King of my jungle, just a gangster stalkin’.” In this way, Ice-T is able to criticize the cycle of violence perpetuated by gangs, “You see they hit us then we hit them / Then we hit them and they hit us.” Thus, “Colors” is both a moment of pride and deep sorrow for Ice-T.
— Alex Maddon
“Black and Yellow” by Wiz Khalifa
Ministry of Sound: Anthems: R&B (2010)
Like Ice-T, Wiz Khalifa references colors in his music to represent how membership in certain groups plays into his identity. A Pittsburgh native, he connects to his hometown and reflects on his success in the 2010 anthem “Black and Yellow.” Although Wiz Khalifa makes no explicit mention of the Steel City, Pittsburgh’s flag and professional sports teams all feature the colors black and yellow. Additionally, the song’s music video includes panning shots of the city and clothing from its sports teams.
Wiz Khalifa pairs remembrances of his hometown with an impressive list of symbols of his status, such as his impressive car, diamonds, an abundance of female admirers, fancy champagne, and weed. Unspoken in this discussion is a contrast between his experience of Pittsburgh as a child and his experience of it now as a wealthy, famous artist. In the music video, the flashiness of his lyrics is paired with scenes of Wiz Khalifa spending time at home like he presumably did when he was younger, kissing a woman who seems to be his mother, and eating a simple breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. Despite how far Wiz Khalifa has come in his career, he illustrates in “Black and Yellow” his awareness of and pride in where he started out by constantly “reppin’ [his] town,” as he repeats in the chorus. This pride manifests in material objects that marry his childhood home with his adult success, such as his “unapproachable” “push-to-start” car, which is adorned with black and yellow stripes. In “Black and Yellow,” Wiz Khalifa provides an example of how to cope with a drastic change in financial circumstances combining remembrances of the past with markers of the present.
— Hadley Callaway
“Gold Digger” by Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx
Late Registration (2005)
Universally, gold is representative of wealth through the precious gold metal. Both Wiz Khalifa and Kanye West invoke this connection in their songs, although Kanye uses his 2005 Grammy-winning hit “Gold Digger” to describe fluctuating class dynamics as a source of jealousy and insecurity in love. “Gold Digger’’ (featuring Jamie Foxx) describes the role of class in romantic relationships, invoking the stereotype of a gold digger, someone — stereotypically a woman — who enters into a romantic relationship with a wealthy individual. The gold in the term “gold digger” represents the wealth motivating the woman. The song opens with Jamie Foxx’s four-line rendition of Ray Charles’ blues song “I Got A Woman,’’ with Foxx flipping the meaning of Charles’ lyrics. Where Charles originally sings about a woman who “gives [him] money when [he’s] in need,” Foxx sings about a woman who “takes [his] money when [he’s] in need.” After Foxx’s opening, Charles’ original lyrics are looped for the entirety of “Gold Digger,’’ interspersed with West’s rapping.
Consistent throughout the song is a looming feeling of misogynistic resentment towards a woman for the assumption that her motives in the relationship are purely financial. West’s chorus laments this woman who intentionally pairs with wealthy men, refusing to apply the term “gold digger” to her yet still insinuating that she is one. He then spends the two verses recounting his experience meeting a woman with kids and providing for her. She seems to have paired with other male celebrities in the past, hinting at her financial motivations for being with the singer, yet he still is attracted to her. In the second verse, his resentment comes through clearly. He has supported her for eighteen years, paying child support and giving her money to spend on superficial expenses such as liposuction. West calls out for a prenuptial agreement, indicating his assumption that this woman will leave him and take his money. His insecurities about the shaky foundation of their relationship boil to the surface. In the last and final verse, West flips the narrative of a woman using a man for his money, which describes a woman frustrated by her man’s lack of wealth. He does, however, have ambition to achieve wealth, and once he does so he leaves his presumably BIPOC partner for a white woman. He spurns the woman before she is able to spurn him, his misogynoir rearing its ugly head.
— Hadley Callaway
“PYNK” by Janelle Monáe ft. Grimes
Dirty Computer (2018)
In almost stark opposition to Kanye West’s arguably misogynistic “Gold Digger,” Janelle Monáe’s “PYNK” is a celebration and elevation of Black women, sexuality and femininity. In her lyrics, Monáe links the color pink to insides, truth, pleasure, brain, emotions, hearts, and more, and connects all of these concepts to femininity and womanhood, complicating historical notions of what womanhood is, should be and can be. Pink simultaneously represents the brain and emotions, which are typically conflicting — women are not simply emotional, and furthermore, being emotional is not a negative thing. Pink is an internal, maternal love; it is depth; it is power. Notably, Monáe spells “PYNK” with a ‘y’ instead of an ‘i,’ perhaps to take away the signifier of the self from the word, and make it about the power in togetherness.
In her music video, which takes place in a desert-like utopia without men, Monáe and her dancers, all Black women, wear what NPR deemed ‘pussy pants,’ visualizing the spectrum of what vaginas look like. They also visualize the spectrum of gender identity, as some dancers did not have the pants: Monáe’s “PYNK” is reliant upon not only gender but also feminine sexuality as inclusive and existing across a spectrum, as she specifically celebrates women loving women. Only boys are excluded, as she sings, “Cause boy it’s cool, if you got blue, we got the pynk.” PYNK’s celebration of women’s sexuality is a reclamation of sex, it is a response to misogynoir such as Kanye West’s throughout the hip-hop and pop canons, it is an outward display of owning one’s body, stripping it of the fetishization provided by the male gaze. Black women are not objectified, but rather the subjects of desire, where they can freely sing, dance, and self-express surrounded by affirming energy, as Monáe is working against the patriarchal reduction of women. We contain multitudes, and Monáe sings those multitudes in the many ways she represents the color pink. “PYNK” reminds us that inside, we are all the same — we should uplift and honor our deeply human experiences together, through fun and love.
— Ibby O’Carroll
“Pink Matter” by Frank Ocean ft. André 3000
channel ORANGE (2012)
Frank Ocean, like Janelle Monáe, uses pink to represent femininity and sexuality in his collaboration with André 3000, “Pink Matter,” off of his freshman album, channel ORANGE. Ocean has synesthesia, a neurological condition that connects multiple senses together; in this case, Ocean mixes sound and color and has said that orange was the color he saw when he first fell in love, setting the tone for the album. On “Pink Matter,” Ocean is searching for guidance, and talks to a sensei, asking deep questions about the world and hoping to gain some knowledge or perspective; together Ocean and the sensei go through four examples of “matter,” the elusive, physical substance which is hard to pin down and define. Gray matter is the brain, purple matter is where the aliens may reside, and pink matter is about women as mothers, as soft places for pleasure. The invoking of sexual pleasure with women as “matter” suggests the fluidity of sexuality, and it’s almost confusing nature to Ocean — but sex with women is also sweet like “cotton candy,” or powerful like “Majin Buu,” which highlights the wide range of what sex provides for Ocean, from pleasure to intensity. Later, Ocean sings about blue matter: “Blue used to be my favorite color / now I ain’t got no choice.” If this is still about sex, Ocean may be referring to his own sexuality and the idea that sexuality is not a choice. Ocean furthers this idea by singing “pleasure over matter” — if we take matter to mean physical bodies or people, Ocean is more interested in sexual gratification than who is giving it to him, in terms of gender. Either way, the colors invoked in Ocean’s “Pink Matter ‘’ act as a metaphor for the search itself — unable to be defined, but expressive and full of pleasure.
— Ibby O’Carroll
“White Ferrari” by Frank Ocean
Blonde (2016)
On “White Ferrari,” a track off his sophomore album Blonde, Frank Ocean continues to use colors to describe feelings, especially of pleasure, and to invoke colors as a form of memory and nostalgia. While “Pink Matter” seems to represent pleasure in the present, in “White Ferrari,” Ocean recalls the innocence, and then the loss, of first love, singing from the perspective of years later: “Sweet 16, how was I supposed to know anything?” The pure freedom of driving at sixteen and staring at the sky with someone you know intimately is captured through Ocean’s lyrics: “Mind on the road / your dilated eyes watch the clouds float / white Ferrari / had a good time.” Ocean captures a look back on the wide-eyed, naïveté of youth, but the white Ferrari can also be seen more figuratively — trying to keep something pristine and intact, but knowing it will age and grow and lose mileage, or the paint will chip, or it will crash — a metaphor for young love. Throughout the song, Ocean contrasts this youthful beauty with the understanding that growing up distorts that beauty — references to nakedness turn to body aches and facelifts. Where in “Pink Matter,” Ocean sang about “pleasure over matter,” now in “White Ferrari,” Ocean has a change of heart: “Mind over matter is magic / I do magic.” The pleasure of his relationship is gone, lost to time, and now all he has is his memories, his mind. To preserve his love, Ocean imagines himself and his romantic interest in another dimension, the only way out of losing innocence, out of losing that one-of-a-kind white Ferrari, out of losing the “good times.”
— Ibby O’Carroll
“Pink + White” by Frank Ocean
Blonde (2016)
To end our dive into Frank Ocean’s fantastic use of colors in his music, we move onto the first piece our class listened to together this semester: Frank Ocean’s “Pink + White.” Ocean uses sound and lyrics in “Pink + White” to fashion a dreamscape centered around remembrance of people and places that populated his youth, all while accepting the changed status of his current life.
In the first second of the song, a flurry of strings jams into a steady piano riff supported by a bassline, forming the hypnotic sound that enfolds the listener. Ocean’s opening lyrics convey his acceptance of the arbitrariness of life despite the liver’s intentions for it: “That’s the way everything goes; every time we have no control, if the sky was pink and white, if the ground was black and yellow.” Thus Ocean voices the title of the song when stating how subjective our lives can be through the hyperbolic examples of a pink and white sky (rather than blue and black) or black and yellow ground (rather than green and brown). Everything could be its opposite with just a change of fate. Through the lack of control, we must go on living. In the chorus, Ocean repeats “Just the same way you showed me, you showed me love,” addressing a loved one who contributed to Ocean’s worldview and loved him in spite of the arbitrary nature of life.
With a change from the bassline and piano backing to a strumming guitar, Ocean brings us into the second verse. He paints a picture of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Ocean’s hometown and where he was a college student during Katrina. Black children climb up the sides of a flooded house and jump into the water below as if diving into a swimming pool, an ironic scene that juxtaposes playfulness with devastation. These children seem to accept Ocean’s core message of the song, taking the destruction of their homes as an opportunity for a new type of fun. They go on living and being children in spite of the ruin, in spite of their lack of control presented by a natural disaster. Ocean even preaches a gratefulness for the same Mother Nature that ravaged New Orleans, illustrating how the same force that destroys also nurtures: “Kiss the earth that birthed you, gave you tools to stay alive, and make it out when the sun is ruined.” Ocean ends with an outro that references his childhood escapades wearing Nikes and stealing cigarettes, with the final lyrics of “Bitch, I might like immortality. This is life, life immortality,” posing that immortality can be found in a youthful vibrancy that makes no attempt to control the uncontrollable.
— Hadley Callaway
“Blue World” by Mac Miller
Circles (2020)
Following the homesick tone of “Pink + White”, in “Blue World” Mac Miller uses the color blue to connote a sadness in his nostalgia for better times and a depressive mood for his present. He begins the song with a sample from the 1950 song “It’s a Blue World” by The Four Freshmen. The sample in the intro is the only time the term “blue world” circulates. The tone is dreamy and nostalgic, sounding like it comes from an old radio. Miller plays on this sentiment, reminiscing on times he wasn’t feeling lonely and heartbroken. In the first verse he says “Without you, it’s the color blue” referencing that he feels blue, or sad. Blue is often used to describe feelings of feeling low and depression. He turns the sample off, and it gets drowned by an upbeat rhythm of Miller’s song, playfully expressing dark lyrics. “Blue World” was released as part of Circles, an album that was released in 2020, after the rapper died from substance abuse in 2018. Miller often expressed his emotions and his mental health issues through his music.
— Caroline Kichler
“Red Eye” by Kid Cudi ft. HAIM
Indicud (2013)
Similar to “Blue World,” “Red Eye” by Kid Cudi (featuring HAIM) explores the themes of heartbreak and nostalgia through the lens of drug use, work-life balance, and love. Each of these three ideas is connected to a red color motif. Even though the song is in common time, the beat maintains a stumbling, dreamlike quality. This can be interpreted as Kid Cudi’s attempt to situate the listener in the midst of his drug use. The melodic quality of the song is upheld by one synthesizer pad, which floats between several indistinguishable chords. Neither Kid Cudi’s nor HAIM’s vocals cut through the mix in the way that most modern productions demand. This was likely a deliberate choice on behalf of the artists aimed at overwhelming the listener with sonic information; forcing an experience that is much like the stimulus overload associated with being inebriated. “Red Eye” is also a reference to the common side-effect of redness associated with marijuana use. Kid Cudi employs a red color motif in the line, “I’m floating through the night on a red eye, red eye.” In this case, red eye refers to an overnight flight. He continues, “Things get crazy and I feel like I’m losing my mind / I don’t know what to do / I’m going insane and I really don’t know why.” Red is also associated with anger and insanity, which Kid Cudi is clearly expressing. His only escape is found in traveling and working. HAIM explores a similar type of confusion and insanity derived from falling out of love. They sing, “I can’t understand, I don’t understand it,” mirroring Kid Cudi’s earlier line. For both artists, working appears to be the only solution to their deep confusion.
— Alex Maddon
“Red Room” by Offset
FATHER OF 4 (2019)
Offset’s “Red Room” explores a much darker side of the red color motif. The lyrics and production behind “Red Room’’ embody the type of gore, heat, and anger typically associated with the color red. The song is structured around two alternating minor chords. This progression lends an evil quality to “Red Room,’’ and serves to intimidate the listener. In the chorus, Offset fantasizes about a violent past, “When I used to kick the door, shoot you for the cash.” He employs onomatopoeia in the adlib that follows, replicating the sound of a shooting gun, “Boot, boot, boot.” He continues, “Devil had a n**** soul livin’ too fast (Soul) / Prayin’ to the Lord, my soul to keep (Keep).” Offset invokes the imagery of the Devil, who is often associated with the color red. The scene Offset describes is one of intense pain and loss for both the victims of the robbery and for Offset who is losing his agency. Later, Offset discusses another moment of pain that he endured after losing his friend Pistol P, “Let the gang know Pistol ain’t ‘gon make it.” The adlib that follows repeats the phrase “ain’t ‘gon make it,’’ as if Offset is reliving the disbelief and trauma of losing Pistol P. Overall, “Red Room’’ is Offset’s attempt to open up about the pain and violence he has experienced.
— Alex Maddon
“Shades of Blue” by VIC MENSA
There’s Alot Going On (2016)
While Offset paints the pain of social and economic injustices of the world through the color red, “Shades of Blue” by Vic Mensa, uses the color imagery to emphasize social injustices, with blue reflecting sadness in the everyday reality, and the color of the police working against Black and Brown communities. The color is also used to paint the visual imagery of water, a motif throughout the song. Blue is often associated with clear water, and Mensa alludes to this with his lyrics throughout his song. He opens up his first verse referencing how predominantly Black communities don’t have access to clean or blue water. He then tells the story of a woman who “got lead poisoning from her showers in the morning” but the government isn’t willing to invest further to help these communities. Mensa emphasizes this with “all-white media coverage” to express that white news leads over those of people of color. The chorus sings “rain or shine, it’s all blue” where blue references the color of clear water, the emotive sadness, and a political statement of the police and government’s biased plans. He continues to reveal the depressive connotation with “ain’t no sun, it’s all blue”. Mensa references trying to see the world in other colors as he brings in “Purple haze, in a daze, it’s all blue, it’s all blue / Change gonna come, it’s all you, it’s all on you”. Purple haze is a strain of Weed that allows him to escape the reality of this blue world, however, Mensa also makes reference to blue being a symbol for the police system, as police officers are well known for arresting Black individuals for alleged drug use significantly more than White. We decided to end our mixtape with “Shades of Blue” because it is a conclusive piece that references other colors while connoting that the world is seen through tinted and biased glasses.
— Caroline Kichler
Slideshow
The slideshow we created for our in-class presentation can be found here.
Roles
- Hadley Callaway: 3 liner notes, introduction, formatting on Medium
- Caroline Kichler: 2 liner notes, introduction, mixtape cover
- Alex Maddon: 3 liner notes, introduction editing
- Ibby O’Carroll: 3 liner notes, edited images for Medium article
- Everyone: song selection, song order, slideshow
References
- genius.com/Frank-ocean-pink-matter-lyrics
- genius.com/Frank-ocean-white-ferrari-lyrics
- genius.com/Ice-t-colors-lyrics
- genius.com/Janelle-monae-pynk-lyrics
- genius.com/Kanye-west-gold-digger-lyrics
- genius.com/Mac-miller-blue-world-lyrics
- genius.com/Offset-red-room-lyrics
- genius.com/Vic-mensa-shades-of-blue-lyrics
- genius.com/Wiz-khalifa-black-and-yellow-lyrics
- npr.org/2018/07/30/627395449/turning-the-tables-the-200-greatest-songs-by-21st-century-women-part-1
- songfacts.com/facts/vic-mensa/shades-of-blue
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ocean#Early_life
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Digger_%28Kanye_West_song%29
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Miller
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Penguins
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Pirates
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Steelers
- wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiz_Khalifa
- youtube.com/watch?v=PaYvlVR_BEc
- youtube.com/watch?v=UePtoxDhJSw
