Rose Xu

Maurice. Rodriguez

Engl 1010

4.29.2020

Social media in hip-hop

Electronics become more and more inseparable with people and the applications

downloaded in the tiny screen will provide with the most wanted information which

takes up most of our time. The things people mostly pay attention on their phone or

laptops are video games or social media, the most popular application type in the

world. There are so many aspects for users to spend most of their time on

technologies like Instagram, Wechat and Snapchat, these applications have widely

spread all over the world. Nowadays, different age groups especially teenagers prefer

to use social media for sharing their life with others even strangers. This trend has

been taken place in most of online platforms as the population of users is always

increasing, texts or facetime get less popular compared to the past. Facebook or

twitter contains more functions than the applications for only chatting with friends, so

the controversy between advantages and harms of social media is one of the most

controversial topics for the present. ‘The Box’ by Roddy Ricch is the hip-hop song

which focuses on social media, and this work has seen massive success since its

release.

According to the lyrics and tempos of this song, ‘The Box’ combines the thoughts

and experience of the producers and the popularity which makes the song accepted by
the audience. He mainly used his free style of lyrics and strong tempo fulfilled his

thoughts of social media. ‘Told’em fuck 12, fuck SWAT’ is the most repeated lyric in

the whole work and the number 12 is a colloquial term for the police because of

Roddy’s own experience as he had previous experiences of getting arrested for alleged

domestic violence. Although this experience will add the negative impression of his

identities, he still combined the experience into his song and organize the most

appropriate tempo to lead the song at the top. Rody Ricch also used his skills to make

the song have the most popular leading point. The audience becomes the most

decisive part for his song and he explained his thoughts and ideas about social media

have the best expressions. As the title mentioned, ‘the box’ can also be called ‘strange

and eccentric’ and that is also the best characteristic for the audience to be addicted.

Social media in the song makes the audience sometimes have the same thoughts as the

work.

‘The Box’ by Rody Ricch is one of the most successful work in his songs, the

audience motivates themselves to have a better and smart side to reconsider what

social media can change the society and people themselves.