Criticism Post #5 “Higher”

Narrative criticism examines if a story is good or not, and if the story seems true to life. In Paul Booth’s article “Memories, Temporalities, Fictions : Temporal Displacement in Contemporary Television,” the author demonstrates how the contemporary digital media landscape not only encourages but also seemingly necessitates a complex interaction with temporality (Booth 1).

Within narrative criticism there are six different story elements :

• Characters : Who the people are in the story.
• Setting : Where the story occurs.
• Theme : The lesson, or moral of the story.
• Tone : The tone being happy, sad, uplifting, etc.
• Plot : What happens in the story.
• Conflict : The issue or problem in the story.

Characters : The main characters in this music video and song are DJ Khaled, Nipsey Hussle, and John Legend. All men have become very successful singers and songwriters, as well as great social influencers in the music industry. DJ Khaled is an American DJ, record executive, songwriter, record producer, author, and media personality. On the other hand, John Legend is an American singer, songwriter, producer, actor, and philanthropist. When putting all three great mind together for a song you get a masterpiece called “Higher.”

Setting : The setting took place in Inglewood, Los Angeles the city close to where Nipsey Hussle grew up. John Legend tweeted on March 31, 2019 “We filmed in Inglewood, close to where he grew up. He was so gifted, so proud of his home, so invested in his community. Utterly stunned that he’s gone so soon.”

Theme : The theme I took out of this song is in the chorus sung by John Legend :

“Oh, you keep taking me higher and higher (Yeah)
But don’t you know that the devil is a liar? (Yeah, I know)
They’d rather see me down, put my soul in the fire
But we keep goin’ higher, higher”

This to me means that no matter how many people “pray on your downfall,” wish bad on you, or look to you as another statistic to fail you have to keep going higher and rise above it.

Tone : The tone to me in this song is uplifting and happy. Though this song was released after Nipsey Hussle passed away, the piano played by John Legend and the choir in the background keeps the song upbeat and hopeful.

Plot : The plot is ultimately Nipsey Hussle telling his story growing up in Los Angeles, and sharing the reason for his existence which is ultimately that his Grandma never gave up on having children even though she had eleven miscarriages. In the genius annotations it read “My granny had 13 pregnancies and has two kids. She had 11 miscarriages from my uncle to my mom. Almost 12 years passed. She was just telling me, ‘Imagine if I would have gave up on my tenth miscarriage, my ninth miscarriage’ … I never thought about it. I wouldn’t be here. You can never repay your mom, your granny with material shit. You gotta repay them with standing up in life, being something they could be proud of.” This song goes through challenges and how Nipsey Hussle had to rise above it so his family would be able to say they were proud of him and he made it out the mud.

Conflict : The conflict in this song, like many of Nipsey Hussle’s songs is growing up in the streets of Los Angeles where gangs “empty clips” in broad daylight during a shootout. The police targeting people of color, growing up around gang bangin, homicides, and “dancing with the devil” to test the fait whether they get to live or die to see another day.

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Citations :

Booth, P. (2010). Memories, Temporalities, Fictions: Temporal Displacement in Contemporary Television. Television & New Media, 12(4), 370–388. doi: 10.1177/1527476410392806

Rguzman. (2019, June 3). BTS Of Nipsey Hussle On His Last Music Video Set With DJ Khaled and John Legend. Retrieved from https://www.power106.com/2019/05/16/bts-of-nipsey-hussle-on-his-last-music-video-set-with-dj-khaled-and-john-legend/