Commentary On The Song Children's Story By Slick Rick

In the song “Children’s Story” by Slick Rick, the overall theme is that Rick is the uncle of two small children who ask for a bedtime story. Rick proceeds to them a story of a young man who was convinced that a life of crime is appealing. The young man eventually gets addicted to thievery and robbery and accidentally gets into a run in with an undercover police detective and things turn south quickly. In this song, he was able to deliver a message of how going down the wrong path is a slippery slope that few ever recover from.
The ethnicity of Slick Rick is expressed by the genre that his story telling is themed under. In the 80’s, rap music that we know of today had an entirely different form. Young African American men turned to Hip-Hop as a way to express themselves in these inner-city environments. Slick Rick was a stunning example of a pioneer of rap music from the Bronx and was known as “Hip Hop’s greatest storyteller”. This …show more content…
The reaction that this song is trying to express is that from an early age it is important that we teach and show our children that doing the right thing is an imperative to leading a good life. Also, that when stray from that vision we end up suffering and losing everything we hold important to us as human beings.
The social problems referenced in this song generally revolve around how young minorities in large city environments tend to join gangs and get influenced by their peers to turning to crime to find wealth. Eventually, these children get addicted to the life of crime and turn to robbery, drugs, and murder in order to survive. Sooner or later, police get involved and use extreme and excessive measures to assert dominance over these individuals in an endless cycle of socioeconomic and institutional