The concepts portrayed in both the Mean Streets and Ghostface’s songs highlight lives lived through organized crime. One has an hour and a half to portray the complexities of “mafian life” while the other is limited by three minutes to only display the negatives of the gangster living. In Mean Streets, the movie followed the life of a morally and spiritually young mobster named Charlie who’s future was more than uncertain. The film did capture the essence of the “mafian life” but it softened the harshness of its reality. In one of the bar fight scenes, the director decided to play a rather up beat song, as if to distract the audience from how violent that way of life truly is.

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The film also threw a comedic perspective into every element of the mafias. With the obsession over money, loyalty and power, the movie deliberately failed to display the blunt truth. When Charlie was asked for the money he had owed, he nonchalantly failed to give a care and slyly removed himself from that position, even able to persuade the men to have drinks with him afterwards.

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Ghostface in his song, Method Man states,

You know the gun show off, whips is gleaming, clean as a fuck
In dirty hallways, the ninas’ll cluck
This is crime station, my obligation is to look raw as ever
Feed my little sons and patients
Cause they hungry, shining, bullet fly right through the lining
Catch me on the plane, humble and wining

Here, there isn’t any romanticization. Here, you have what Mean Streets failed to deliver, the exact truth. Without blurring lines, Ghostface paints the harsh realities of living in this style. He describes violence, death, drugs and sex as it plays in daily life.