By Lonjezo Idrissa

Artist: Third Eye

Genre: Hip Hop

Producer: Cap 10

For music is not all about contents that are well natured with lyrics that aims at attacking or dissing other rappers who exists in the society and convey messages about money, girls, pride, and other fancy things that exists in the society, Third Eye took his time in a song titled Rich Mind to advocate to his fans and all the Malawians out there on how best one improve his or herself in this world. The song is well spiced with motivational and inspirational lyrical contents that will change ones negative attitude and perception about oneself. 3rd Eye did not just come up with this song but he looked at Malawian society with a critical eye on the social problems that people are being injected with, which are resulting in  lack of development in the country. Instead of the country moving forward, there are a lot of things that are denying it from doing so because a lot of people who are capable of changing their lives from worse to better, they are just seated down doing nothing and as for others, they are busy praising themselves as thieves for that is what they do for a living. One thing they do not know is that there are several things that one can do in order to improve one’s life and Third Eye has taken his time to both advocate and educate.  

Third Eye opens his song by saying, “Life is what you are making every day is a choice, you gotta reach inside yourself when you found your voice, find your feet, you gotta move yourself. Aint nobody give a damn until you improve yourself, true worth is health, if you want to be rich and dare you can suit yourself or you can suit yourself and sound the best and show up on a Monday which is a self-respect, this is self-reflect, when you open a deal coz that’s the only way you can close a deal and then you cash your cheque, save first, capitalised then invest”  mainly to enlighten his audience on the real definition of life and some of the appropriate steps that they can follow so as to develop their lives, having in mind that there are a lot of people who have already given up on their lives and do not know how they can improve their lives for better. Strongly enough, the most targeted audience is the youths who makes almost 60% of the total population of Malawi so as to be improving their lives by saving some money and start some small businesses in form of entrepreneurships. The audience is mostly the youth because Third Eye is well known by the youths living in Malawi more than the youths and again, since the whole song has been well equipped with English language and the type of language that has been used by the artist is best understood by the youths of the modern generation for every generation has its own type of language that it uses.  

After the first verse, the artists further came up with a hook where he advised the audience on how he improves his life every day, and this is evidenced in the lines, “You can never go broke with a rich mind, so I see everything as a dollar sign, so I use my own mind and a gold mine, when it comes to a destiny I can show mine” strongly to advise his audience that one can never be poor if one has a mind-set of dreaming big in his or her life, and that he (Third Eye) always sees everything around him as a platform that can help him to indulge into something that benefits his life and he has evidence that he can show to the world because of his ambitious mind. In other words, Third Eye is trying to tell us that we need to use every resource that we have to improve ourselves for the better because self-improvement does not only emerge from being employed at a certain organisation but also through some inborn  and learned skills and knowledge that we have.

In the second verse, Third Eye then used the lines, “You gutta eat like a lion, take care of your pride, save your energy for the future undefined, you gutta be a leopard, always stay focus, never get destructed, always keep your mind open, blow your trumpet like a big elephant, whatever happens never forget your budget, buffalo souljah I am the one with a held, protect everybody, my investment is secure charging rhino, charging down my debt, otherwise I pay more every time I do collect, then again I am a rich mind” mainly to advise the Malawian society to be investing more in their lives just like a kind of the jungle, the lion, never to be pride to those who are around them when everything is going on well since they do not know what the future holds for the ones that they may tend to be pride to may help them in the future. This just clearly depict that the message is going the youths in Malawi who are still schooling or have already graduated for their future is not yet defined as it is with their parents. The use of the metaphor “You gutta be a leopard” symbolically means that one need to focus on ones future goals and achieve them just as the way a leopard does it when it is hunting, it does not stop until it catches it. For there are many people and challenges that come in your way to success, Third eye is also advising his audience to know about it and never pay attention to them.

Since audience tends to remember what they hear or read at any literature content, Third Eye’s song ends with the words, “You can never go broke with a rich mind, so I see everything as a dollar sign, so I use my own mind and a gold mine, when it comes to a destiny I can show mine” mainly to let the audience the main emphasis of the whole song and for the message to stick in their minds.

Had it been that most of the songs that Malawian musicians produces contains such kind of songs, many people’s lives could have been changed for good but since a lot of them are busy singing about girls, money, hatred and others, that’s why most of their audience’s lives resemble what they sing in their songs.