This song, like most of Marley's music, is ambiguous and not specific on purpose. Therefore it can relate to any number of things as interpreted by the individual. I personally comprehend it as follows:
Marley at some point begins to see the hidden darkness in the fallacies of the social world, which had previously given him a false sense of comfort, or light. He is searching for the only true essence, void of darkness, love; which too has gone missing. All he can find is this "concrete jungle," an overpopulated, over-organized society of people who carry their own cage with them through life unknowingly. All he wants to do is live an honest life out of a corporate-driven society but the "sweet life must be somewhere to be found" He has no chains around his feet, referring to slavery directly, but he is not free. he is bound in this concrete jungle, where the living is harder, in captivity. He's laughing like a clown because he either is smoking the reef, or he is referring to how even though life sucks at times, humor is its only remedy sometimes. At the very end of the song, he poses the question: [Concrete Jungle or Society] "what you got for me now?" - Why does he have no choice to live out of society? Does it make his life better or worse? Is it just a means to control a large population, increasingly making the lives of the individual worse to merely perpetuate natural selection and reproduction? - I'm not even fucking religious but if there were ever a prophet, Marley deserves the tag.
This song, like most of Marley's music, is ambiguous and not specific on purpose. Therefore it can relate to any number of things as interpreted by the individual. I personally comprehend it as follows: Marley at some point begins to see the hidden darkness in the fallacies of the social world, which had previously given him a false sense of comfort, or light. He is searching for the only true essence, void of darkness, love; which too has gone missing. All he can find is this "concrete jungle," an overpopulated, over-organized society of people who carry their own cage with them through life unknowingly. All he wants to do is live an honest life out of a corporate-driven society but the "sweet life must be somewhere to be found" He has no chains around his feet, referring to slavery directly, but he is not free. he is bound in this concrete jungle, where the living is harder, in captivity. He's laughing like a clown because he either is smoking the reef, or he is referring to how even though life sucks at times, humor is its only remedy sometimes. At the very end of the song, he poses the question: [Concrete Jungle or Society] "what you got for me now?" - Why does he have no choice to live out of society? Does it make his life better or worse? Is it just a means to control a large population, increasingly making the lives of the individual worse to merely perpetuate natural selection and reproduction? - I'm not even fucking religious but if there were ever a prophet, Marley deserves the tag.