Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) by Marvin Gaye (1971)

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Marvin Gaye (born Marvin Pentz Gay Jr., April 2, 1939 – April 1, 1984) was an American singer, songwriter and record producer. In the 1960s, he helped form the sound of Motown, first as an in-house session player and then as a solo artist with a series of hits, gaining him the moniker "Prince of Motown". [1]

Depiction of Black Racism in Real Life

Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) by Marvin Gaye

Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler), also shortened to "Inner City Blues," is a song by Marvin Gaye, released as the third and final single of his 1971 landmark album, What's Going On. Composed by Gaye and James Nyx Jr., the song portrays the ghettos and grim economic conditions of inner-city America and the emotional impact they have on its occupants. [2]

Crime is increasing
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God knows where we're heading

Oh, make me wanna holler
They don't understand
Mother, mother
Everybody thinks we're wrong

"Inner City Blues" is a realistic song about the forced suffering and violence that many Africans Americans have to endure in this country, throughout the history of the world. All the while seeing their children be used as cannon fodder in foreign wars or succumb to a society of indifference and crime at home. [3]

Back in 1971, this track immediately got popular because of James Nyx Jr.'s scathing analysis of lost tax dollars. He thought how could the US government splurge billions on sending astronauts to the moon when life in the Detroit ghettos remained so hard? Reading the paper that morning, Nyx was drawn to a report of the 'inner world' – the forgotten place they were concerned about. What a better way, he figured, to sum up the problems he and Gaye had written down – than the song 'Inner City Blues.' [4]

He referred to this specific lyric, “Rockets, moon shots
Spend it on the have-nots
Money, we make it
'Fore we see it, you take it

Reference

  1. Marvin Gaye. en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on Feb 4, 2021.
  2. Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler). en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on Feb 4, 2021.
  3. Larry. Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) by Marvin Gaye. songfacts.com. Retrieved on Feb 4, 2021.
  4. VF Team. How Marvin Gaye’s ‘Inner City Blues’ remained a protest anthem for nearly 50 years. September 16, 2019. Thevinylfactory.com. Retrieved on Feb 4, 2021.