Kyle Dargan said of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)” in the Paris Review:
Anyone who has taken a workshop with me has heard my idea about writing poetry being like building the lightest possible plane that will fly. Sometimes, that is. There is a place for excess, for everything in poetic intent, but, staying with this idea of efficiency and vicious concision, Marvin Gaye and James Nyx’s “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)” has impressed me for a long time by capturing so much depth and nuance with so little. The sense of being caught in an inescapable, economic spiral builds over the verses, but let’s start with the second: “Inflation, no chance/ to increase finance. / Bills pile up sky high./ Send that boy off to die.” “Inflation, no chance” is an economics white paper in itself, but the juxtaposition of all four lines makes it possible to see a connection among poverty, loss of economic ground, and the pressures to enlist (and die) in the army. A sparse, quiet but wrenching verse that creates space for the “holler” to emerge as the chorus.
Inner City
Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)
Rockets, moon
shots
Spend it on
the have nots
Money, we
make it
Fore we see
it you take it
Oh, make you
wanna holler
The way they
do my life
Make me wanna
holler
The way they
do my life
This ain't
livin'
This ain't
livin'
No, no baby,
this ain't livin'
No, no, no
Inflation no
chance
To increase
finance
Bills pile up
sky high
Send that boy
off to die
Make me wanna
holler
The way they
do my life
Make me wanna
holler
The way they
do my life
Hang ups, let
downs
Bad breaks,
set backs
Natural fact
is
I can't pay
my taxes
Oh, make me
wanna holler
And throw up
both my hands
Yea, it makes
me wanna holler
And throw up
both my hands
Crime is increasing
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God knows where
We're heading
Oh, make me wanna holler
They don't understand
Make me wanna holler
They don't understand
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