“As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.”

Kendrick Lamar

“Hopefully my music is medicine, some type of antidote for something or some kind of explanation or just to feel good.”

Erykah Badu

Before we had the technology to listen to music in our homes, we had the technology to print mass copies of written literature. Poets used brilliant flourishes of language to reach into the lives of readers and speak to their daily experiences as humans. Music was available for those who could afford to attend live shows and those who could afford instruments in their homes, but it did not speak to the masses in the way it does today thanks to technology. Music, like poetry, speaks into the lives of listeners and uses lyrics and atmospheric sounds to recreate the human experience. Today’s digitized and affordable access to artists’ entire discography has also allowed for the increase of subgenres that can speak to very specific groups of people. Artists like Zach Bryan, Erykah Badu, Kendrick Lamar, and Olivia Rodrigo are lyricists who have used the power of poetry to infiltrate the hearts of individuals on national and international scales. Though we no longer look to poets as the leaders of lyrical beauty, we surely live in a technological era that has brought us back to the Elizabethan culture of “going to hear a play.”