Brett Guillaume
Janel Spencer
WRT 101S
3 October 2019
Rhetorical Analysis of Joyner Lucas’ Song “I’m Sorry”
“I know that you can hear me, all I need is like five minutes,” (85) these are the words of Joyner Lucas in his song, “I’m Sorry,” published on August 12, 2016. The topic covered in the music video is mental illness, and how it entails a serious issue. Joyner Lucas effectively uses his ethos, and unbelievable amounts of pathos, and his slight logos to convey his point to the audience on how serious mental illness is. Lucas’s purpose is to inform the viewer of how serious mental illness can affect people in order to persuade and educate the viewer that we, as a society, should be considerate to those that are affected with a mental illness. He adopts a depressing tone for his audience in order to convey his point. Lucas supports his claims by first, showing both sides of the story to appeal to his ethos, then showing a fair amount of graphic images including explicit language to appeal to the audiences emotions, and finally by using his logical reasoning, which appeals to his logos.
Gary Maurice, formerly known on stage as Joyner Lucas, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, poet, and actor from Worcester, Massachusetts. To give a little insight, “I’m Sorry” is a song off of Lucas’ popular album (508) 507-2209. Yes, his album title is his phone number; he did this for an abundance of reasons. The main reason was for people to reach out to him for help when they are dealing with mental illness. If someone were to call the number, they would hear his voicemail, the same voicemail(s) heard in most of his songs throughout the album. He wrote this album to discuss the current highs and lows of his life, and ties his recent voicemails into his songs off the album. Focusing on the song “I’m Sorry,” Lucas expresses in an interview with Billboard, “I’ve always felt misunderstood. Growing up it’s been my word against the teachers or my parents’ word and nobody would ever listen to me.” This establishes Lucas’ ethos because no one ever used to listen to him, but now with his fame and popularity, people will listen to and hear what he has to say, and thus he becomes a voice for the voiceless, or others who may have felt similarly. Lucas proves that he is worthy to listen to because of all the adversity he has been through in his life. With suffering from the same points in the song, Lucas can relate to his audience and again; becoming a voice for the voiceless. Lucas also establishes his ethos by giving both sides to the story, the side of the mentally ill person in the video, and the side of how he feels after the person takes their life.“I’m Sorry” currently has 54.6 million views on YouTube in three years, which most would consider a lot. This much exposure to the song means that people are watching and sharing the video, because they feel like it has a great message, furthermore establishing Lucas’ ethos.
Throughout the song, Lucas appeals to pathos to convince the audience that mental illness is a real problem in this world. Lucas’ writes in his song during the second verse, “But I don’t understand how we couldn’t prevent this shit, / you took the easy way out, goddammit, you did / I mean, look what you did / I’m so f—ing upset how could you be so selfish?” (60-64). Verse one of the song is the perspective through the mentally ill person, and verse two of the song is Lucas’ perspective. Lucas is appealing to the audience by saying, “I don’t understand how we couldn’t prevent this shit;” (60) Lucas wants the audience to wake up and realise that mental illness is a serious issue, for the sake of people taking their own lives because of it. On behalf of the second part of the quote, Lucas is expressing his frustration about his friend taking his own life, Lucas calls him selfish, and expresses how upset he is. With Lucas saying this, he is also saying to the audience that taking your own life isn’t the solution to the problem, instead you will be remembered as selfish. No one in their right mind wants to be remembered as selfish, when they pass. Therefore, Lucas is making the audience think about how other people would feel; how other people would feel if you took your own life. Lucas is making the audience think about how precious and special life really is. Lucas also says, in verse two, “I wonder if you could do it again, would you do it different?” (91) Lucas is again talking about his dead friend in the quote. The audience gets a sense how how hurt Lucas really is; thinking that he is talking to his dead friend. Most of the word choice and images in the video make the audience feel really emotional and sad; making them want to do something about this current academic. This conveys to Lucas that he did a great job with both writing and directing the music video, because of all the lives that he has touched.
Lucas appeal to logos was one of his weakest appeals in the whole music video, but he was still able to appeal to it. Lucas writes in the song, “I hope you got what you wanted/ I hope you finally happy/ It’s too late for you/ Been going out of my mind/ You don’t know how many times that I done prayed for you” (54-58). Lucas is saying that once you are gone, that’s it, you can’t ever come back. This makes the audience realise how serious this is issue is; once you take your own life there is no going back. Lucas logic is to make the audience who is contemplating sucide really to think of their decisions. Lucas speaks on behalf of God in the quote, telling his dead friend that he doesn’t know how many times Lucas’ prayed for him to get better. Lucas also appeals to logos by saying, “Goddamn it, you dead/ I mean, look what you did.” Again, Lucas’ is explaining to the audience that once you are dead there is no coming back. This also makes the audience realise how precious life is, and that they should learn how to cherish life and all that comes with it. Lucas explains throughout the song that life is hard, but you must get through it because the grass is definitely not greener on the other side.
“I know that you can hear me, all I need is like five minutes,” I gave Lucas 5 minutes and it was honestly very influential and informative. From the very start of the song, Lucas main purpose was to convince and persuade the audience that mental illness is a serious and chronic issue in today’s society. Lucas did this by first establishing ethos, using emotionally loaded language as pathos, and had the logic to back it up with logos. Lucas writes from his perspective in the verse, “maybe it’s my fault, I shoulda paid more attention to what you been doing, maybe I should have been more of an influence,” to show the selected audience that they can be the person that changes someones mind on suicide. Lucas wants the audience to be emotionally driven to change. Someone does not just change out of the blue, they must be convinced that they are apart of the problem, and Lucas makes the audience feel this way with his unbelievable amounts of pathos.
Works Cited
Lucas, Joyner. “Joyner Lucas – I’m Sorry (508)-507-2209.” YouTube, YouTube, 12 Aug. 2016,
Accessed 19 September 2019 www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjKbw1Cqpt0.
Saponara, Michael. “Joyner Lucas On Crafting ‘(508) 507-2209,’ His Competitive Streak & Why
He Thinks Logic Is ‘Corny’.” Billboard, 29 Aug. 2017, Accessed 19 September 2019
Vegas, Leon. “I’m Sorry Lyrics.” Genius, 10 Aug. 2016, Accessed 19 September
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