How do you leave the past behind When it keep finding ways to get to your heart It reaches way down deep and tears you inside out 'Til you're torn apart RENT! How can you connect in an age Where strangers, landlords, lovers Your own blood cells betray What binds the fabric together When the raging, shifting winds of change Keep ripping away Draw a line in the sand And then make a stand
This connects Lamar to both the song “Rent” from the musical and Beverly Daniel Tatum’s “The Complexity of Identity: Who Am I?” in a sense that his identity has changed completely through time. Trying to get his rent money on time has become an essential part of his life that it tears him apart mentally and emotionally. When it comes to betrayal, it almost seems like his whole country betrayed him, after he fought in the Vietnam War. As the “shifting winds of change keep ripping away,” he gets closer and closer to the complete homeless side of life, on the streets with no necessities for him and his two sons.