Strange Ways

Strange Ways is a song by Madvillain off of their only album Madvillainy, well, there's an instrumental only version and a remix too, but those don't really count. Madvillain is the name of the collaboration between rapper/producer MF DOOM and rapper/producer Madlib. On this project, Madlib produced and DOOM rapped. The album is made up mostly of short 2 minute vignette songs that usually have something to do with the concept of villainy.

Strange Ways is a two verse song criticizing the established government. The first verse is about a drug dealer trying to feed their kid being bothered by the police. The second verse is about US occupation in the Middle East. He criticizes the way that non-violent crimes are punished so heavily while at the same time, the government commits worse atrocities in the Middle East. DOOM acts as a narrator of these scenarios rather than rapping from the drug dealers perspective or the perspective of someone in the Middle East. He's speaking to people who don't understand or aren't willing to call the government out on their crap. The song deepens the experience of people who are dealing drugs out of necessity and people who are unfairly persecuted by police as well as the experience of soldiers being used as tools.

The first line of the song is: "Wreak havoc, beep beep it's mad traffic". This line is not actually about cars or traffic, but about the chaotic, hectic lifestyle of a drug dealer. 'Wreak havoc' could be referring to how drug dealers are seen by upper-class people, as destroying the fabric of society. 'beep beep' is obviously an onomatopoeia for someone honking their car's horn. This indicates frustration or being in a hurry. Both of which are more than likely the case for someone in the drug business. 'mad traffic' continues the car/driving metaphor, everyone's on the same road, trying to make something to support themselves or their family. Like a traffic jam, nobody is moving forward, and nobody asked to be there.

The first verse goes on to talk about people getting snitched on, and the police bothering drug dealers who are just trying to feed their kids. DOOM warns that one day the police might catch a guy in a desperate situation and they might get shot. I don't think that he's telling people to shoot the police, rather that people have circumstances that you don't know. If driven into a desperate situation, with a kid at home to feed, they might take extreme measures to ensure their safety. Both parties in this exchange believe they are doing the right thing in order to get by. The police are just doing their job, so are drug dealers. It's the same thing. This leads into the rhetorical question: "Now, who's the real thugs, killers and gangsters?" After the verse defending the circumstances of drug dealers and humanizing the people who are forced into that situation, it's obvious what the answer is.

The verse finishes with DOOM calling for revolution: "When the smoke clears, you can see the sky again/There will be the chopped off heads of Leviathan". Leviathan is a sea-monster from the Hebrew Bible that is supposed to be beheaded before the apocalypse. In this case he uses the Leviathan as a metaphor for the current system and officials, saying that the 'beheading' of this system will usher in a new, better era, rather than the more traditional end of Earth.

The second verse is much more literal, which I think works well for the topic, but leaves less to analyze for poetic devices. The verse starts off with another rhetorical question: "They pray four times a day, they pray five/whose ways is strange when it's time to survive" Jewish are supposed to pray four times a day during Sabbath and Muslims are supposed to pray 5 times a day. The focus is on these extremely small differences, when it should be on how they're similar. Much like the police and drug dealer from the first verse. People focus on the differences and hate each other because of it. People are so convinced that whatever they believe in is right, but there's no way to be certain until you're actually dead. This continues the argument for the ridiculousness of the Arab Israeli conflict because they have different beliefs, yet neither side actually has proof that they are right and the other is wrong.

The verse moves on to how US occupation has only aggravated these problems. He points out how few people war actually helps. For the most part all that comes from war is dead young people. The ones who do benefit are rich people sitting behind desks. There's one line that I really like simply because of how blunt it is: "...it costs billions/to blast humans in half, into calves and arms" billions of dollars of resources go into war, and all that comes out is humans getting blasted to bits. Next, DOOM criticizes the US military for going into weaker nations and utterly destroying them with their superior weapons. They put on a front of doing this to 'instill democracy' but they have a pretty bad habit of leaving right after they've done whatever they wanted to. It's fairly common knowledge that all of our foreign 'intervention' is to get oil. DOOM is skeptical of the military's excuses, saying: "Sounds to me like that old robbery/extortion".

The song ends off on a mingle between MF DOOM speaking and samples of Gentle Giant's "Funny Ways" (which actually had different parts sampled throughout the entire song). The lines exchange speakers each time, starting with the sample: "They stay/Same game/Strange ways/Ya can't reform 'em" This interval actually played between the 2 verses, but the same game part only played the second time. It's something of a concluding statement for the song. All of these things he's talked about throughout the song are the same game. The police and the drug dealer both just want to make money to support their family. The Jewish and Muslim people both believe in very similar things. The US government engages in the same kind of robbery that they will prosecute others for. We tend to focus on the differences and see other people as strange.

I think it would be overwhelming for me to analyze the absolutely insane rhyme scheme on this song, but it would be remiss of me to not mention it. Like multiple rhyme schemes going on at the same time within one line, switching in and out smoothly. I'd recommend everyone who's actually read this far to go in and just read the lyrics and not think about the content at all, just looking at how the words rhyme. It's slicker than ice. But that's not what makes Strange Ways poetic. It's the multi-dimensional language, from metaphors, to rhetorical questions, dichotomies, and imagery, Strange Ways is able to weave some extremely complex and meaningful ideas into a song that is 1 minute and 20 seconds long with a short skit at the end. The language is complex, and there are no wasted words. While Strange Ways is much more political than most of Madvillainy, it fits in well with its questioning of how we perceive certain things as villainous.