Both songs, "A Tale of 2 Citiez" and "All Falls Down", describe shortcuts to perceived success. They describe scenarios of young adults trying to achieve what they think is success by obtaining material goods by taking shortcuts. Even with these descriptions of the shortcuts people take, they do not promote the idea of ​​achieving success through shortcuts to obtain material goods to try to show others that they are successful as both express regrets and negative attributes related to those actions. In both songs, artists J. Cole and Kanye West describe the shortcuts younger generations would take to try to achieve the illusion of success. J. Cole's "A Tale of 2 Cities" describes one scenario. He begins by describing a young woman in college, stating, “she has no idea what she's doing in college, the major she majored in makes no money, she won if you don't drop out, her parents will look at her strangely (West ).” In this way the song establishes that this woman wants success but doesn't know how to achieve it as she was basically pushed to pursue a college career that she wasn't sure about in order to achieve success The song continues the woman's story when she states that she gives up and she continues by saying that her tuition money is enough to buy a few pairs of new shoes. The desire for success and the frustration of not being able to achieve it is what essentially leads the woman to take this shortcut of dropping out of school to acquire material goods. in the “now” instead of the slower, standard path of finishing his education and finding success through that. Kanye West then describes in the song his reliance on material possessions as he began to acquire wealth from his music career. He says in the song “Dude , I'm so self-conscious, that's why you always see me with one of my watches", showing that he took the path of obtaining material goods as soon as he acquired money to try to show others his successes (West). He furthers this point by stating "then I spent 400 bucks on this, just to say, you don't measure up to this", proving that this wasn't just one fluke, but a constant repetition of showing off his material possessions to constantly prove to present yourself to others as