Reflections on “Wishing For A Hero” by Polo G (Featuring BJ The Chicago Kid)

One of my students recommended I listen to Polo G. So I listened to him and wanted to compile some of my thoughts about this song because it was my favorite song on his album The Goat.

Immediately when listening to this song I recognized the song that was sampled. It samples “The Way It Is” by Bruce Hornsby.

I learned that song on piano a while ago because I like the piano riff at the beginning. I like a lot of Bruce Hornsby’s piano playing.

But back to Polo G.

Sampling originally comes from hip-hop DJs playing two records at the same time and then later became common practice in recording studios and in hip-hop beats. Then it became more popular using small samples of instruments like violins for film scoring and certain sounds in other electronic music.

I love sampling. I’ve made a YouTube video on how to use samples to make your drums more interesting. I use sampling techniques in almost all of my current songs.

It’s influenced many different genres of music and has been very important in the development of modern music. So I want to make sure that I credit hip-hop music for having come up with that idea. I think it’s especially important considering what this song is about.

So what’s the song about?

Polo G has kept the theme of the song mostly the same as Bruce Hornsby’s. Bruce Hornsby’s song is about inequities, just as Polo G’s is. Bruce Hornsby’s song is about how little sympathy and help people in poverty get from wealthier people. Polo G’s song is largely about the same thing. It’s about how black people in the United States are actively harmed by the police and how very few people seem to be trying to do anything about it. It’s about a lot of different things. The main theme is that few people seem to care about the lives of black people.

Polo G makes it more relevant to today and more modern and more explicitly about the racial violence that the police inflict on black communities in the United States. This time though it’s from the other perspective. Bruce Hornsby being a white man singing about inequities is different than Polo G singing about inequities. Even if they are the same inequities. Polo G has a different perspective and I really like what he’s done.

Some specifically musical things that he does.

There’s a choir added. And it’s a gospel choir, which is a part of black culture. You don’t hear the words “the way it is” sung until 2/3 of the way through the song, but you have that choir still there, but humming. I think that’s an awesome addition. It’s hinting at the song in the beginning and playing a sample of the piano riff, but it doesn’t have the full song with those words until later.

He’s also changed the melody a tiny bit by adding in some vocal runs. Rather than singing it exactly the same way Bruce Hornsby does, he makes it his own and sings it in the style that he wants to sing it in.

He’s also added a bit to the melody. In the end, the gospel choir is singing “never, never / some things will never change.” This isn’t part of the original Bruce Hornsby song, but Polo G has added it to his song.

And when I hear this song with the words “that’s just the way it is” and “some things will never change” it doesn’t make me think that Polo G is simply accepting those things or saying that people should do that. It sounds more like he’s trying to point out that very little has changed in the experience of being a black person growing up and living in the United States.

This point I think is made even more clear and more obvious by Polo G using this song that was written in 1986. “Waiting For a Hero” comes more than 30 years after “The Way It Is”, but the struggles that black people face in the United States are largely the same. Hence the phrase “some things will never change.”

And another layer to be added to this point is that Tupac made a song called “Changes” that came out in 1998 that samples the same Bruce Hornsby song and is about police brutality and violence towards people of color.

So not only is Polo G referencing the original Bruce Hornsby song, he’s referencing Tupac’s own use of that sample about the same subject.

What makes this especially moving is that he (Polo G) is pointing out the same problem. He’s pointing out a problem that has been around for so long. And has been left largely unresolved for way too long. Racial inequities in the United States need to be fixed, especially ones that are dealing with police violence. People of color deserve to grow up safe and deserve to not have to worry about being harassed or brutalized by police.

Polo G even quotes Tupac in his own lyrics:

“Wish we could go back to them days when we played as kids
A lot of shit changed, that’s just the way it is”

When “Changes” by Tupac original has these lyrics:

“I’d love to go back to when we played as kids
But things change and that’s the way it is.”

Polo G also quotes Tupac with this line:

“Why would the devil take my brother if he close to me?”

And Tupac’s song has this line:

“How can the devil take a brother if he’s close to me?”

He’s paying tribute to the Tupac song by using the same sample and those same lines.

Even though the subject of the song is tragic, I think Polo G has done something incredibly clever quoting Tupac and using the same Bruce Hornsby sample. Things need to change, even if it seems like they never will.

So with all of that what are some things you can do to help make a change?

Donate money or time if you can to different organizations like the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, or the NAACP.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a good day.

ISJ