Analysis Of J. Cole's 'High For Hours'

In the the third verse of the song High for Hours by J. Cole, Cole explains to his audience the importance of being at peace with yourself before trying to start a revolution and fix the entire world. He understands that his audience is quite young so he knows that he can use ethos to persuade and teach his listeners. Throughout the verse he talks about what power does to man and that there is no way for people to overthrow the powerful until they are at peace with themselves. He describes the importance of looking at the past and uses logos to analyze the lack of thought in the rising generation. The song is in the genre of hip hop and has slow paced beat and has a more serious tone because Cole is using pathos to make his audience understand …show more content…
Cole’s audience is mainly kids between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. This is the upcoming generation, thus when he speaks on such topics he understands that he has a large influence on the kids of this generation. He uses ethos to effect the youth because he knows that he is an established rapper and celebrity so many people in this generation look up to him. Therefore when he speaks on important topics he understands his impact. The topic that he touches on in this verse is the idea of most people are not aware of the history behind overthrowing the powerful. Many people think that the rich and powerful are inherently evil, but these people do not understand that overthrowing them does not help. Once these people overthrow the people in charge they just become the same people that were there before. It is a vicious cycle that repeats itself. He says, “Children in abusive households grow up. Knockin’ girlfriends out cold-that’s called a cycle. Abused becomes the abuser and that’s just how life goes”. This idea of “abused becomes the abuser” explains J. Cole’s questioning of overthrowing the powerful because if the abused (the poor or non powerful) take the spot of power in the society or hierarchy then they just do exactly what the abusers did. Thus it is a cycle that never ends unless there is someone who is at peace with …show more content…
Cole says, “So understand. You get the power, but you know what power does to man? Corruption always leads us to the same shit again...What good is takin’ over, When we know what you gon’ do? The only real revolution happens right inside of you”. Here J. Cole reiterates the idea that once the people who overthrow the powerful, get the power they just become corrupt and do the exact same thing their predecessors did. Then he talks about that there is no point to try and dethrone these people until you have had a revolution within yourself. A revolution is useless unless the people who want the revolution are willing to change their ways and not mirror what the people before them did. They cannot be selfish once they have achieved their goal, they must be willing to work for everyone and not be greedy. J. Cole said that the initial thought is that if “we overthrow the oppressors..we destroy the system, that means we’ll have less of greed” but then he talks about that these people clearly are not looking at history. Throughout history there have been many instances when citizens would dethrone their oppressors and would take their spots just to do the exact same thing. Thus when J. Cole speaks these ideas to his audience he is trying to convince this new generation that jumping to the conclusion that a revolution is the only correct answer is not correct, this new generation needs to think about the consequences and whether or not they will be able