Living for the City

 Listen Now
RS Cover Reprints
Buy the Album at Rhino.com

Written by: Wonder
Produced by: Wonder
Released: August '73 on Tamla
Charts: 17 weeks
Top spot: No. 8

Wonder went epic with "Living for the City," a bleak seven-minute narrative about the broken dreams of black America. Wonder sings about a boy growing up in the mythical town of Hard Times, Mississippi, surrounded by poverty and racism. When he takes the bus to New York in search of a better life, he gets set up for a drug bust and goes to jail. Wonder filled the song with cinematic dialogue, even recruiting one of the janitors at the recording studio to play the white prison guard who mutters, "Get into that cell, nigger." Public Enemy sampled the line years later on It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

Appears on: Innervisions (Motown)

Next: The Boxer

Back to RS 500 Albums!
Back to RS 500 Songs!