(Name redacted)
Blake Sanz
Writ 1122
1/21/19
Writing Assignment #1 “I Got A Woman”
As Ray Charles and Ranald Richard sat on their tour bus a song came on the radio titled “It Must Be Jesus” by a gospel singer named The Southern Tones. They grew a liking to this song and in 1955 they released a sample if the song titled “I got a woman” originally titled “I’ve got a woman” (All Music). The song would later be sampled and covered by over 25 major artists including the Beatles and Elvis, but the most popular of the covers was done by Kanye West, titled “Gold Digger” (Who Sampled). Ray Charles’ “I got a woman” and Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” have similarities in the way the songs impacted the artists' careers and differ quite a bit in their audience, message, and time of release. Comment by Manuel Sanz: You’ve got the fundamentals of an argument here, and your first paragraph says things related to each song, but even still, there are ways to create more of a natural connection between the first few sentences and the final one. Beyond that, there are ways to provide more detail to the argument evident in the final sentence. If you’d like more specific advice on how to do those things, let’s talk.
When listening to both songs it is easy to notice the differences between them. “I’ve Got a Woman” sings happily about being in love with a girl who helps him out financially and takes care of him. In the chorus, Charles sings, “I’ve got a woman, way over town, that’s good to me… She gives me money when I’m in need, Yeah, she’s a kind of a friend indeed” (Genius). I got a woman, way over town” Kanye’s “Gold Digger” reverses the gender roles as well as the changes the light in which woman is portrayed. Kanye changes the chorus to “She take my money when I’m in need. Yeah, she’s a triflin’ friend indeed. Oh, she’s a gold digger, way over town, that digs on me” (Genius). For the first two verses Kanye portrays situations in which a woman takes advantage of a man financially, but in the last verse, Kanye switches the roles back to the male using the female for financial gain. Comment by Manuel Sanz: While it might be okay to start with what is easy to notice, writing this paper should be a way for you to quickly move beyond what is easy to see, and to things that you could only notice after thinking about it for a while. Comment by Manuel Sanz: What line are you referring to here? It’s not clear how the song does this.
One reason we see such a drastic change in the message portrayed in the lyrics is due to the 50-year gap between when the two songs were released. “I Got a Woman” was released in the 1950s, a time when people were much more conservative, and patriarchy was still acceptable, while “Gold Digger” was released in the 2005 people were a lot more progressive and the music industry was a lot more provocative. Both songs were very fitting for their time and were embraced and appreciated by their audience as well as help grow their writers’ careers tremendously. Ray Charles “I Got a Woman” was his first hit of many, topping at number one on the top 100 R&B list (All Music). Kanye’s “Gold Digger” was an even bigger success. The song hit number one Billboard Hot 100, Pop 100 as well as several other charts (Billboard). The song also broke many records as well such as most downloads in the first week. As we can see both songs were huge hits during their time of release. One interesting thing to consider in timing “I Got a Woman” is more recently the song is being seen as sexist. Most people understand that the social standards in the ’50s were much different from now but, if the song was released today it would get a lot of heat for the way it supports patriarchal ways (Star). One line stating, “She knows a woman’s place is right there, now, in her home” (Genius) especially highlights the sexism in the song. Instead of glorifying the female stereotypes Kanye villainizes certain female stereotypes and because of this he also received a small amount of backlash. Comment by Manuel Sanz: And yet, Charles’s song was highly controversial for its time. Did you discover that in your work for this paper? It would make more sense, I believe, for you to bring a bit more knowledge to the table when making this particular claim. Comment by Manuel Sanz: More progressive how? More provocative how? It’s not enough to make a general claim like this and assume that readers know what you mean by it. The more specific you can get about these things, the more convincing the argument here will become? Comment by Manuel Sanz: How so? What do you mean by this? Many would argue that, given Charles’s roots in gospel music, church music, a song sung in a gospel style but, about meeting a mistress on the sly, was not at all “fitting for the time.” What do you think? These are the kinds of rhetorical factors that this paper is meant to get you to analyze and make a comment on. My point is that there is more to say about the difference between these songs than the general stuff you’re laying out here. Comment by Manuel Sanz: I’m curious how the fact of the songs being hits matters to the way that they sound different. Comment by Manuel Sanz: It’s totally a smart move to compare the patriarchal quality of Charles’s song to the masculine attitudes in West’s. Like with what I said above, there’s a whole lot more to write about this—this sentence is a good start. What else do you think there might be to say? If you’re not sure where to go from here on this point, let’s talk, and I’ll give you some ideas.
At the time of Gold Digger’s release, Kanye West was about to release his sophomore album and was beginning to gain traction. Coming from the middle class into the world of fame and fortune was a big change for Kanye (Biography). Like many others new to fame Kanye didn’t know how to handle the fame and flaunted what he had. We see this in his lyrics a lot in Gold Digger. As he indirectly flaunts what he has in the chorus and first verse. Ray Charles, on the other hand, was much humbler in his songs. This could be linked to adversity he faced throughout his life growing up black in the south in the ’30s and ’40s (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Charles also watched his four-year-old brother drown when he was five, went totally blind at seven, lost his mother when he was fifteen and father at seventeen, according to his autobiography (Brother Ray, Charles). He used music as an outlet to help cope with a lot of the adversities he faced which added a lot of depth and emotion to his music Comment by Manuel Sanz: Point out the connection you’re talking about specifically. You’re definitely getting close here to making the kind of argument that the paper is asking you to make. Comment by Manuel Sanz: Do we see evidence of that m.o. in this particular song of his? If so, show it.
The brand that the artist built itself also plays a big role in the contrast between the songs. Part of Charles image was his Christian and conservative views which showed in his music by often following the nuclear love story. Much of Ray Charles revolved around him chasing and falling in love with women especially in this specific album titled Ray Charles later renamed Hallelujah I Lover Her So(Genius). In the album, we also see a few other songs titled “Come Back Baby” “Ain’t That Love” and “This Little Girl of Mine”(Genius). We can see that at that time of this album a lot of his music was happier R&B music revolving around women and the ideas of a perfect woman back in the ’50s. When we look at the genre and industry itself that he worked on a lot of the music at the time followed this same blueprint of men chasing women and falling in love. For instance, A song titled “Pledging My Love” stayed number one on Billboard 100 for ten weeks that year and another song titled “My Babe” for five weeks (Billboard). Comment by Manuel Sanz: I mean, the dude had 12 children by 10 women. I don’t know how “conservative” it makes sense to call him. Or how much it makes sense to imagine his songs about relationships are trying to paint some rosy, perfect picture of idealized love, given this rhetorical fact. What do you think? Throughout the rest of this paragraph, you lean toward this womanizing version of him more, but even then, there’s not much of a connection you’re yet drawing between Comment by Manuel Sanz: I’m curious: where’s your idea of the 50s coming from? You don’t have it wrong, exactly, but you’re speaking about it in general terms, and what you want to do here is make your writing much more specific to Charles himself, and his experience.
When we look at Kanye’s album much of his music at the time revolved around his new-found independence after dropping out of school and making some money from his freshman album. His sophomore album Late Registration revolves mostly around the idea him gaining money and traction in the music industry after dropping out. The four skits in the album give more context to his views on college life as the main character in the skit mocks fraternity life as he starts his own frat based on some broke African Americans (Genius). The rap industry was still changing, partially because of Kanye, into a more of pop culture, but a big part in the industry was showing off what you have and proving “street cred”. Comment by Manuel Sanz: Yes to this! I really appreciate that you’re thinking to connect “Gold Digger” to the sound on the rest of the album, and where he was musically at that time. That’s exactly the right move to make. The next step here is to connect the assertions you make about him at this time to “Gold Digger” itself. To do that, consider answering this question: given the cool insight you’ve got about how the album involved West showing his street cred, how do you think “Gold Digger” helps do that?
Ray Charles “I got a Woman” and Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” both helped launch their artists' careers and were big hits during the time of their release. The songs vary due to the timing and what was socially acceptable and socially acceptable at the time. One revolving around a nuclear love story during the ’50s and the other based around a toxic relationship built on financial gain in the 2000s. While both songs have been seen as supporting sexist and patriarchal stereotypes, they portray two different messages. Although the songs have received some criticism, they, for the most part, were revolutionary songs that had huge impacts on their industries, changing and shaping genres of music forever.
Citations
“'Gold Digger' Notches 10th Week At No. 1.” Billboard, Billboard, 4 Jan. 2013, www.billboard.com/articles/news/60728/gold-digger-notches-10th-week-at-no-1.
Charles, Ray, and Renald Richard. “I Got a Woman by Ray Charles on WhoSampled.” WhoSampled, George Martin, 1 Jan. 1970, www.whosampled.com/Ray-Charles/I-Got-a-Woman/.
Gerome, John. “Ray Charles Turned Gospel Song into Classic: Author.” Thestar.com, Toronto Star, 20 Apr. 2007, www.thestar.com/entertainment/2007/04/19/ray_charles_turned_gospel_song_into_classic_author.html.
“Get down Girl, Go 'Head, Get Down.” Genius, Genius Media Group Inc., 30 Aug. 2005, genius.com/37856.
“Gold Digger (Kanye West Song).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Jan. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Digger_(Kanye_West_song)#cite_note-riaa.com-13.
“I Got a Woman.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Jan. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Got_a_Woman.
“Kanye West.” Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 16 Jan. 2019, www.biography.com/people/kanye-west-362922.
Planer, Lindsay. “I Got a Woman - Ray Charles | Song Info.” AllMusic, www.allmusic.com/song/i-got-a-woman-mt0006296970.
“Ray Charles.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 5 Aug. 2015, www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/ray-charles-about-ray-charles/554/.
“Ray Charles Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography, Advameg, Inc., www.notablebiographies.com/Ch-Co/Charles-Ray.html.
“She Gives Me Money When I'm in Need / Yeah, She's a Kind of Friend Indeed.” Genius, Genius Media Group Inc., 1 Jan. 1957, genius.com/4037890.
(Grade redacted) Name redacted– What I most appreciate about this draft are the places where I can see you developing an argument about the songs that goes beyond the obvious. That feels most present in the penultimate paragraph (that means “second-to-last”) where you describe what Kanye was going for in this album. There, you say a thing about how he’s after street cred, and that argument feels like it came from a place of having done some research. In that paragraph, the next move to make would be to provide a touch more evidence of how you’d show that the album is in fact trying to do that, and then, to connect that aspiration to “Gold Digger”—that is, show how that song is, in fact, West trying to show his cred in a certain way.
What I’m suggesting you might do to that paragraph is similar to what you could do to other paragraphs, too. Except that, first, in those other paragraphs, you’d need to get to the point of having an argument to make that went beyond the obvious. Take the third paragraph of the paper as an example: yes, both songs were really popular. Yes, the songs came out something like 50 years apart. Yes, that means that, like, the times were different. But all of that is pretty obvious, right? Strive to learn more about each specific time—1954 and 2005—but in a way that shows that you’re not just relying on pre-existing generalizations of those times. Rather, look to show something more directly tied to each singer’s relationship to their times. In that way, then, you’d be in a position, then, to see what kinds of claims there are to make, what kinds of evidence you would need to support those claims, and also, how those claims relate to other arguments you’re making in other parts of the paper.
This kind of work will require big-picture thinking of what you want to claim about how the songs are different, and why. You might find it most doable with some guidance from me. If that’s something that you’d like to have, I’d be happy to provide it.