Stevie Wonder's Vision of Black Life in Motion
More than 50 years later, the symphonic “Living for the City” endures.
When Stevie Wonder released his 16th studio album, Innervisions, in August 1973, the U.S. was in turmoil. Richard Nixon’s presidency was unraveling, the Vietnam War was grinding toward collapse, and the civil rights movement had splintered. Across the spectrum of Black music, artists were shifting from optimism to realism, and the malaise of “We Shall Overcome” had given way to false hope of prosperity. Stevie, one year into pronounced creative freedom thanks to a new recording contract at Motown, stood firmly at those crossroads: Blending political urgency with spiritual renewal, Innervisions lamented drug dependence on “Too High,” denounced sinning on “Jesus Children of America,” and warned against the evils of a deceitful trickster, widely thought to be Nixon, on “He’s Misstra Know It All.”
But it was the album’s third song, “Living for the City,” that became a cultural touchstone for its vivid portrayal of existence as a Black person in 1970s New York. A progressive funk song that forecasted rap music, it predicted the nascent genre’s tone and sound by nearly a decade, and one can draw a direct line from it to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message” — released in 1982 — as having been influenced by Stevie’s mix of storytelling, sound design and social commentary. On the surface, “Living for the City” is an upbeat stomp of thumping drums, deep Moog bass and pitched-up vocals, but the vitality leads to a deeper conversation about racism and idealism, how the dream of a better life in the big city isn’t always realistic.
The song follows the story of a young Black man who is raised by a hard-working family in Mississippi, where he sees his parents labor for long hours, and low pay, as they struggle to raise their children. The man travels by bus to New York City to build a prosperous new life. Yet when he gets off the bus, he’s met by a drug dealer who offers him $5 to run a package across the street. Police officers show up, stop and frisk the young man, and arrest him. A judge then informs the man that a jury has found him guilty and sentences him to 10 years in prison. In the last scene, a white prison guard orders him into a jail cell, using the n-word, and slams the door.
Here’s what’s fascinating about this scene: Stevie conveys most of it through an extended skit in the middle of the song, an approach that hadn’t largely been done to that point. By sampling city sounds — vehicle horns, sirens and people chattering outside — he put the listener right in the middle of Manhattan, using the location’s intensity to punctuate the song’s narrative: That, in those days, New York City could be a cold, desolate place full of crime and violence in which generosity doesn’t reside.
Was Stevie’s depiction a bit dramatic? Yes. But it also aligned with other songs of the era — namely James Brown’s “Down and Out in New York City,” released that same year. There, James offered similar insight, this time from the perspective of a native trying to navigate the landscape. “You try hard, or you die hard,” he sang. “No one really gives a good damn.” Where “Down and Out…” doesn’t end happily, Stevie (being Stevie) at least tries to end “Living…” on a positive note. “I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow,” he sang through the growl he’d sometimes use to emphasize his point. “And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow. This place is cruel, nowhere could be much colder. If we don’t change, the world will soon be over.”
Once again, Stevie was making space for joy and outrage to rest within the same song, much like he’d done on tunes like “Evil,” “Heaven Help Us All” and “Do Yourself A Favor” years prior. Though on “Living for the City,” a seven-and-a-half-minute short film disguised as a funk song, he operated as a one-man band against the country’s false promises.
“Living for the City” begins already in motion, the Moog bass tuned to emulate the heartbeat of urban confluence. As the drums and keys come in to bolster Stevie’s fervent singing, the groove locks into something hypnotic. Equally gritty and industrial, the intro sounds like Manhattan waking up, the steam wafting through manhole covers before the day comes to test aspirations. Stevie’s use of street noise makes the song one of the earliest examples of audio vérité in pop music, predating hip-hop’s sample-driven narrative.
I remember the first time I listened to the song’s middle section. I was impressed by its audacity, the strong language, and the vision it took to put a whole skit in the song. It took bold ingenuity to do something like that, but in doing so, Stevie pulled listeners out of poetic abstraction and into the system’s machine. Plus, practically speaking, it’s a whole-ass diss track to New York City — a hardcore move. Again, hip-hop before hip-hop was born. Not only does the tension between order and chaos make “Living for the City” a timeless cut, it solidifies the song as my favorite in Stevie’s vast discography. Yes, I know that’s an impossible task — everyone has a different fave of Stevie’s and they’re all correct — but when it’s time to play his music, I find myself circling back to track 3 on Innvervisions before any other.
When I play the track nowadays, I consider how so much of Stevie’s music feels ancestral. It feels like generations collapsed into a single note, tracks that speak to children and elders at the same time. “Living for the City” makes me think about how hard we work just to be seen, and how perilous the grind can be without the right support. I think about how the protagonist wasn’t given the chance to endure, and I’m floored once again by Stevie’s genius. Because no matter where you play the song — in New York or Philly or any major city — the beat fits the ecosystem, the bassline pulsing, menacing yet alive, ominous and full of possibility. In that way, “Living for the City” is the sound of expectations and heartbreak dancing in the same room, a story of American racism as old as time. By turning pain into melody, Stevie sings about strife without drowning in it. Though it takes faith to survive in a major metropolis, “Living for the City” easily lights the path.