Likewise, West invokes the muse in his opening track. Vergil asks “Muse recount to me the cause…” in the Aeneid, and Homer requests “Sing, Muse” in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The invocation of a muse, likely Calliope, was an essential piece to epic poetry. This “muse” is seemingly ageless, as it was a muse in Plato’s symposium and as Dionysus, or Bacchus, and his wine inspired many poets and philosophers throughout Greek and Roman history. Taylor then follows with a sung hook verse, asking the audience and the musicians, “Can we get much higher?” This is an invocation to the muse of the musicians, which in this case seems to be narcotics. Minaj resolves to elaborate to the “children”, an allegory for a listener who has much to learn and is eager to do so, the real story of the African American life. The one that outsiders see is “watered down” and is only a “twisted fiction”. Even the lifestyle of someone such as West, an acclaimed and significantly wealthy musician, is “far too mean”. This verse skewers the false perception of African American life in the American society.
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