"that it ain’t no gun they can make that can kill my soul"
January 25, 2015 5:49 AM Subscribe
No other lyrics more perfectly captured the spirit bubbling under the surface of hip-hop in the latter half of 2014 than those sung in J. Cole’s cracking, raspy-voiced performance of “Be Free” on The Late Show on December 10. Clad in a “Fuck Money Spread Love” hoodie, and rocking the post-natural, 2014 version of the revolutionary ’fro, Cole used the venerable Ed Sullivan Theater as a pulpit, bringing attention to Ferguson and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. He provided an anthem for protests taking place just blocks away.What’s Going On: Kendrick Lamar, D’Angelo, J. Cole, Kanye West, and the New Sound of Protest Music.
Yeah, this article made me sad. If this is all we have to hope for in terms of protest music, we're fucked. Where is today's Rage Against The Machine? Or Public Enemy? or Dead Prez?
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:42 AM on January 25, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:42 AM on January 25, 2015 [5 favorites]
"post-natural"?
posted by Thorzdad at 6:46 AM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 6:46 AM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
i dunno - one person's corny is another persons heartfelt - i really enjoyed the letterman performance of "be free." as to grantland digging deeper - yeah, that'd be cool, but this article was obviously comparing the protest music of super huge stars of yesteryear to the super huge stars of today, so talking about the underground scene would change the entire topic of the article. i do disagree with the writer on one point - i don't think kanye's protest stuff has been buried at all, i think some people just pay attention to his persona (and how the media presents his persona) more than his music - protest, the black experience, slavery, commercialism, what it means to be free, etc etc etc have all been there from the very beginning in his work. i do wonder if they're offbase with what he's about to release though - i wouldn't be surprised if there's protest music, but so far the two tracks we've seen have been very atypical for kanye and he might be about to surprise us all.
posted by nadawi at 7:00 AM on January 25, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by nadawi at 7:00 AM on January 25, 2015 [8 favorites]
if i had to guess - post-natural means, following in the revived natural hair movement.
posted by nadawi at 7:01 AM on January 25, 2015
posted by nadawi at 7:01 AM on January 25, 2015
These aren't the best examples.
I don't hate J. Cole but he tends to get a bit corny when he starts going in on the traditional "conscious rap" issues, Crooked Smile is the one track on Born Sinner that has never grown on me and I felt that way about a lot of the message tracks from Forest Hills Drive.
January has already seen two very strong releases in Joey Badass's B4.DA.$$ and a return to form for Lupe Fiasco in Tetsuo & Youth. Lupe is off doing his own thing mostly in his new album, but Deliver and some of the verses in Choppers do cycle kinda touch back on current events. Though I personally think it's his strongest recent work simply because he's focusing on the stories first and the messages second, which makes his stuff sound a lot less like you're being lectured at over a beat.
B4.DA.$$ is perhaps a bit more topical, but nothing gets explicitly mentioned. His performance on Fallon is pretty good, and I connected with it better than J. Cole's performance on Letterman.
posted by C^3 at 7:07 AM on January 25, 2015 [3 favorites]
I don't hate J. Cole but he tends to get a bit corny when he starts going in on the traditional "conscious rap" issues, Crooked Smile is the one track on Born Sinner that has never grown on me and I felt that way about a lot of the message tracks from Forest Hills Drive.
January has already seen two very strong releases in Joey Badass's B4.DA.$$ and a return to form for Lupe Fiasco in Tetsuo & Youth. Lupe is off doing his own thing mostly in his new album, but Deliver and some of the verses in Choppers do cycle kinda touch back on current events. Though I personally think it's his strongest recent work simply because he's focusing on the stories first and the messages second, which makes his stuff sound a lot less like you're being lectured at over a beat.
B4.DA.$$ is perhaps a bit more topical, but nothing gets explicitly mentioned. His performance on Fallon is pretty good, and I connected with it better than J. Cole's performance on Letterman.
posted by C^3 at 7:07 AM on January 25, 2015 [3 favorites]
sure there might be better examples, but how does their reach compare to marvin gaye, jimi hendrix, and sly stone? there was better protest music in the era the writer is referring to as well, but that's not the point they're making.
posted by nadawi at 7:13 AM on January 25, 2015
posted by nadawi at 7:13 AM on January 25, 2015
Yeah, this article made me sad. If this is all we have to hope for in terms of protest music, we're fucked. Where is today's Rage Against The Machine? Or Public Enemy? or Dead Prez?
...not here yet?
The tone in here is reminding me of the hand-wringing that happened in 2002 and 2003 from critics wondering where the "artistic response" to 9/11 was, and why we hadn't seen it yet. It happened in New York, they asked, which was filled with writers and artists and playwrights and yadda yadda yadda - why hadn't we seen anything yet?
Speaking as one of those New Yorkers in the art community, the thing those critics forgot is that art takes time, especially when you are also trying to recover, as a person, from being freaked right the fuck out. Especially if you had friends or family or roommates or neighbors who were injured or killed. The reason there hadn't been an artistic response yet in 2002 or 2003 is because we needed a year to process that shit, and then a year to edit and polish and workshop what we did write. And sure enough, we started seeing 9/11 as a motif in theater in about 2004 or so.
2014 saw an upswing in tension in racial relations. But it was only a few months ago. The Rage Against The Machine of today is still playing in small clubs and polishing its material - give it time.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:23 AM on January 25, 2015 [16 favorites]
...not here yet?
The tone in here is reminding me of the hand-wringing that happened in 2002 and 2003 from critics wondering where the "artistic response" to 9/11 was, and why we hadn't seen it yet. It happened in New York, they asked, which was filled with writers and artists and playwrights and yadda yadda yadda - why hadn't we seen anything yet?
Speaking as one of those New Yorkers in the art community, the thing those critics forgot is that art takes time, especially when you are also trying to recover, as a person, from being freaked right the fuck out. Especially if you had friends or family or roommates or neighbors who were injured or killed. The reason there hadn't been an artistic response yet in 2002 or 2003 is because we needed a year to process that shit, and then a year to edit and polish and workshop what we did write. And sure enough, we started seeing 9/11 as a motif in theater in about 2004 or so.
2014 saw an upswing in tension in racial relations. But it was only a few months ago. The Rage Against The Machine of today is still playing in small clubs and polishing its material - give it time.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:23 AM on January 25, 2015 [16 favorites]
I'm not sure, nadawi; I didn't get the impression that the scope and purpose of the article was to draw parallels between the most wide-reaching 'protest music' of today and the most wide-reaching protest music of the past. Sure, the author used well known examples for each--Marvin Gaye, Sly, Kanye, J. Cole, etc.--but I took that as evidence that the author didn't feel like--or otherwise just didn't--look beyond hit charts and charting artists for good protest music.
Which is fine, I guess, but it does give the impression that these are the best or only voices of protest rap/R&B have to offer.
posted by still bill at 7:24 AM on January 25, 2015
Which is fine, I guess, but it does give the impression that these are the best or only voices of protest rap/R&B have to offer.
posted by still bill at 7:24 AM on January 25, 2015
really? i guess we read it completely differently - the writer managed to nearly entirely name top charting artists and spoke almost solely about the giant stages they had for performing their protest music - it seems like the wide reaching part was the main conceit. the mention of run the jewels 2 was really the only departure from this theme.
posted by nadawi at 7:31 AM on January 25, 2015
posted by nadawi at 7:31 AM on January 25, 2015
I understand this impulse, because I have all these wild hopes for the new Kanye album, that it will come with a blistering take on the last year (even though "FourFiveSeconds" is not really doing that for me...).
But artistic expression as protest isn't limited to music. The 60s/70s was an epic era for the protest song, but it was also an epic era for song in general. Someone in the Serena Williams thread recommended Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, which is incredible protest poetry. If this is the era of television as art, where is our protest television? Can't we consider Twitter a way of expressing protest through art? Etc.
posted by sallybrown at 7:46 AM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
But artistic expression as protest isn't limited to music. The 60s/70s was an epic era for the protest song, but it was also an epic era for song in general. Someone in the Serena Williams thread recommended Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric, which is incredible protest poetry. If this is the era of television as art, where is our protest television? Can't we consider Twitter a way of expressing protest through art? Etc.
posted by sallybrown at 7:46 AM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Are the kids even hearing the music? If they are, do they like it? Are they being inspired by these songs to swallow hard, take a deep breath and jump in to work for justice? I'm not even sure if music is the conduit to inspire today. What's actually going to hit people, especially young people, in the gut and wake them up? Further, what will actually put the fear of God of those in power? Marches don't work anymore, no one in power is threatened by a "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," there is no presence in media who can lead a President to say, "If we've lost Walter Cronkite, we've lost America," so there needs to be something new that will hit the oligarchs too, yes?
Anyway, protest songs: getting on Letterman and Colbert is nice, but it means nothing if the kids don't watch these shows and don't listen to these artists or if music doesn't affect them like it did our parents. Are these musicians ones that kids actually listen to? I'm not sure if the charts these days reflect anything other than what people who buy music like, and is that mostly 20-/30-something white people with disposable income?
Plus, "the media" is so scattered today that there's no place where at least 80% of the country pays attention to one outlet as in the days of Uncle Walter. I don't think we even have any one person in America today that so many of all generations even respect, much less a performing artist who is compelling enough to command attention for what s/he's saying like a Marvin Gaye, Joan Baez, or a Bob Dylan.
It feels like the online arena is so segregated by race, class, age... what do we do to reach people in an era where if you don't want to give a shit about any kind of justice, a fun site about kittens, or fancy cars, or celebrity gossip, or "Sure, Jan" memes is but a few clicks away, and you don't have to see a news site ever again if you don't want to?
posted by droplet at 8:19 AM on January 25, 2015
Anyway, protest songs: getting on Letterman and Colbert is nice, but it means nothing if the kids don't watch these shows and don't listen to these artists or if music doesn't affect them like it did our parents. Are these musicians ones that kids actually listen to? I'm not sure if the charts these days reflect anything other than what people who buy music like, and is that mostly 20-/30-something white people with disposable income?
Plus, "the media" is so scattered today that there's no place where at least 80% of the country pays attention to one outlet as in the days of Uncle Walter. I don't think we even have any one person in America today that so many of all generations even respect, much less a performing artist who is compelling enough to command attention for what s/he's saying like a Marvin Gaye, Joan Baez, or a Bob Dylan.
It feels like the online arena is so segregated by race, class, age... what do we do to reach people in an era where if you don't want to give a shit about any kind of justice, a fun site about kittens, or fancy cars, or celebrity gossip, or "Sure, Jan" memes is but a few clicks away, and you don't have to see a news site ever again if you don't want to?
posted by droplet at 8:19 AM on January 25, 2015
glad Killer Mike got a mention
posted by angrycat at 8:21 AM on January 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by angrycat at 8:21 AM on January 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
getting on Letterman and Colbert is nice, but it means nothing if the kids don't watch these shows and don't listen to these artists or if music doesn't affect them like it did our parents.
That's actually a really good point. Letterman would have been the equivalent of Ed Sullivan back then, and if Ed wasn't letting the Doors sing "Light My Fire" as written, then he sure as HELL wasn't gonna let protest songs on. The protest songs of the 60's weren't on the Letterman-risqué shows in the first place, they were in more alternative venues.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:28 AM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
That's actually a really good point. Letterman would have been the equivalent of Ed Sullivan back then, and if Ed wasn't letting the Doors sing "Light My Fire" as written, then he sure as HELL wasn't gonna let protest songs on. The protest songs of the 60's weren't on the Letterman-risqué shows in the first place, they were in more alternative venues.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:28 AM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
i follow a bunch of younger people on tumblr and twitter and the like, and just like the demographics older and younger than them, their interests are incredibly varied. people who are interested in this style of music, or engaged in this part of pop culture have seemed to care - some like it, some don't - some find these big star protest type movements to be inspiring, some feel like they haven't gone far enough. they don't watch letterman, but they certainly pass around viral videos and both the letterman and colbert performances were huge on the various blogs and feeds that mix entertainment and social consciousness.
posted by nadawi at 8:33 AM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by nadawi at 8:33 AM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
> we started seeing 9/11 as a motif in theater in about 2004 or so.
"Using something as a motif" is not the same as a real artistic response.
"Angels In America" was such a response to AIDS - and I personally think of it as the Great play of our age (and my friend who teaches drama at a post-secondary level says that I'm not alone).
And earlier, WWI, WWII, and Vietnam - each resulted in great works that are still being seen or read generations later. But we have yet to see a Great work coming from 9/11, nor Great works coming from the new economic inequity, or from the militarization of our police forces and the consequence oppression of the poor and people of color (and no, 160 character Twitters probably aren't it either, though I'm welcome to URLs...)
And here's the point where I'm supposed to explain why this failed to happen. But I don't think there's a simple reason. I certainly think we'll grow old and die if we wait for the Kanye Wests of the world to do it for us - such work is almost invariably created by young outsiders.
Certainly some of this is because of the fragmentation of the market. Many people now just pick a genre or a few tiny subgenres and consume that - and many of these have a pre-packaged, generic rage built right into the structure, like hardcore, black metal or various hip-hop flavors. Much of the actual anger is just boiled off that way.
But I really think the number one cause is the consolidation of all the mass media companies into a small number of huge conglomerates. With only six media companies controlling the overwhelming majority of the market, and with each of those six having their tentacles deeply in the military-industrial complex, there's every incentive not to release material that will rock the boat.
I think I'm going to listen to some Saul Williams now...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 8:40 AM on January 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
"Using something as a motif" is not the same as a real artistic response.
"Angels In America" was such a response to AIDS - and I personally think of it as the Great play of our age (and my friend who teaches drama at a post-secondary level says that I'm not alone).
And earlier, WWI, WWII, and Vietnam - each resulted in great works that are still being seen or read generations later. But we have yet to see a Great work coming from 9/11, nor Great works coming from the new economic inequity, or from the militarization of our police forces and the consequence oppression of the poor and people of color (and no, 160 character Twitters probably aren't it either, though I'm welcome to URLs...)
And here's the point where I'm supposed to explain why this failed to happen. But I don't think there's a simple reason. I certainly think we'll grow old and die if we wait for the Kanye Wests of the world to do it for us - such work is almost invariably created by young outsiders.
Certainly some of this is because of the fragmentation of the market. Many people now just pick a genre or a few tiny subgenres and consume that - and many of these have a pre-packaged, generic rage built right into the structure, like hardcore, black metal or various hip-hop flavors. Much of the actual anger is just boiled off that way.
But I really think the number one cause is the consolidation of all the mass media companies into a small number of huge conglomerates. With only six media companies controlling the overwhelming majority of the market, and with each of those six having their tentacles deeply in the military-industrial complex, there's every incentive not to release material that will rock the boat.
I think I'm going to listen to some Saul Williams now...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 8:40 AM on January 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
On a related note Bob Dylan's new album will be included for free in some 50,000 AARP magazines.
posted by srboisvert at 9:16 AM on January 25, 2015
posted by srboisvert at 9:16 AM on January 25, 2015
Yeah, this article made me sad. If this is all we have to hope for in terms of protest music, we're fucked. Where is today's Rage Against The Machine? Or Public Enemy? or Dead Prez?The thing is, middle-aged people have been saying this about young people's cultural output since... always. Maybe today's protest music isn't as good as ours was, but I think it's more likely that we're just kind of getting old.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:22 AM on January 25, 2015 [11 favorites]
> Maybe today's protest music isn't as good as ours was,
That's not what we're saying - we're saying that protest music is not visible from the mainstream, not that its quality is any the less. As an example, I'd stack Saul Williams' "The Pledge of Resistance" up there with any protest music from my childhood.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:28 AM on January 25, 2015
That's not what we're saying - we're saying that protest music is not visible from the mainstream, not that its quality is any the less. As an example, I'd stack Saul Williams' "The Pledge of Resistance" up there with any protest music from my childhood.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:28 AM on January 25, 2015
if i had to guess - post-natural means, following in the revived natural hair movement.
That would be retro-natural or natural revival. Post- generally indicates what comes immediately after the thing, which more often than not is a reaction against said thing with an intent to crush it. (HAIR PREFIXES ARE IMPORTANT!) (But, yes, it is clear the writer meant the thing you said.)
Anyway. The stuff he's talking about in this article? Isn't that what hiphop has always been, since before it was called hiphop? Conscious rap may have been largely obscured by twerkable club tracks in recent years, but it's always been there, right below the surface. It's not cyclical; the writer just apparently has a massive gap in his knowledge.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:47 AM on January 25, 2015 [2 favorites]
That would be retro-natural or natural revival. Post- generally indicates what comes immediately after the thing, which more often than not is a reaction against said thing with an intent to crush it. (HAIR PREFIXES ARE IMPORTANT!) (But, yes, it is clear the writer meant the thing you said.)
Anyway. The stuff he's talking about in this article? Isn't that what hiphop has always been, since before it was called hiphop? Conscious rap may have been largely obscured by twerkable club tracks in recent years, but it's always been there, right below the surface. It's not cyclical; the writer just apparently has a massive gap in his knowledge.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:47 AM on January 25, 2015 [2 favorites]
I think that Rawiya Kameir's piece "Our Generation Needs Liberation Music, Not Protest Songs" is way better than this, because... it addresses what a lot of y'all are talking about upthread. It ain't about protest, it's about being free. A nuanced, but significant, difference.
(And then we talked about Refused on Twitter, which was great.)
posted by raihan_ at 10:02 AM on January 25, 2015 [3 favorites]
(And then we talked about Refused on Twitter, which was great.)
posted by raihan_ at 10:02 AM on January 25, 2015 [3 favorites]
> I think it's more likely that we're just kind of getting old.
I want to comment on that specific argument, because we get this every time we have any discussion of the music industry and it seems to be very popular. Being older doesn't disqualify you from having a critical opinion, and it's a generic argument that can be used on any critical statement about music at all from an older person.
I personally have been critically listening to music for over 45 years - but most of the music I listen to was made in the last decade, and this is true of many of my contemporaries. We're in a golden age for music - we have access to the collected wealth of many generations, but also the arrival of the computer and home studio means that all sorts of "marginal" individuals suddenly have a voice.
I love the music of today as much as the music of my childhood, and again, this goes for many of my contemporaries.
But there have been dramatic changes, particularly in the pop charts - the most glaring change is a great homogenization and flattening.
It is objectively true that "top 100 pop music" (we can quibble, but you know what I mean) has been compressed in every way - the fact that the measured volume, intensity and loudness (three slightly different values) have been compressed is well-known, but also objectively measurable numbers like tempos, key signatures, song structure and length have also become far more uniform.
There's also a subjective "compression" of the content. Space and time prohibit me from writing this out in full, but let me direct your attention to a canary in the coal mine, the concept of the "novelty song". For many years, in "the industry" a novelty song wasn't necessary a humorous song like, "The Monster Mash" - it was anything that didn't fit into an established genre and included things like electronic music.
Forty years ago, novelty and fringe material charted all the time - sometimes ridiculous things like "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Haa!" or much of Devo, and sometimes dead serious material like Alan Parson's "I Robot" or Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells". Even if you weren't listening, you knew when this material appeared on the radio, because it jumped out at you...
And what do we have now? We have Weird Al, a great guy, but one who sounds very much the same as the other songs on the radio if you don't pay attention to the lyrics.
It isn't just that we're all old and weepy - there's been a sea change. The popular music that is presented to us by the mainstream media has become homogenized, and it's this homogenization that's keeping voices of protest - or voices of revolution - off the "airwaves".
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:37 AM on January 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
I want to comment on that specific argument, because we get this every time we have any discussion of the music industry and it seems to be very popular. Being older doesn't disqualify you from having a critical opinion, and it's a generic argument that can be used on any critical statement about music at all from an older person.
I personally have been critically listening to music for over 45 years - but most of the music I listen to was made in the last decade, and this is true of many of my contemporaries. We're in a golden age for music - we have access to the collected wealth of many generations, but also the arrival of the computer and home studio means that all sorts of "marginal" individuals suddenly have a voice.
I love the music of today as much as the music of my childhood, and again, this goes for many of my contemporaries.
But there have been dramatic changes, particularly in the pop charts - the most glaring change is a great homogenization and flattening.
It is objectively true that "top 100 pop music" (we can quibble, but you know what I mean) has been compressed in every way - the fact that the measured volume, intensity and loudness (three slightly different values) have been compressed is well-known, but also objectively measurable numbers like tempos, key signatures, song structure and length have also become far more uniform.
There's also a subjective "compression" of the content. Space and time prohibit me from writing this out in full, but let me direct your attention to a canary in the coal mine, the concept of the "novelty song". For many years, in "the industry" a novelty song wasn't necessary a humorous song like, "The Monster Mash" - it was anything that didn't fit into an established genre and included things like electronic music.
Forty years ago, novelty and fringe material charted all the time - sometimes ridiculous things like "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Haa!" or much of Devo, and sometimes dead serious material like Alan Parson's "I Robot" or Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells". Even if you weren't listening, you knew when this material appeared on the radio, because it jumped out at you...
And what do we have now? We have Weird Al, a great guy, but one who sounds very much the same as the other songs on the radio if you don't pay attention to the lyrics.
It isn't just that we're all old and weepy - there's been a sea change. The popular music that is presented to us by the mainstream media has become homogenized, and it's this homogenization that's keeping voices of protest - or voices of revolution - off the "airwaves".
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:37 AM on January 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
I was struck by Kendrick Lamar's song, not because it was good and heartfelt (it was), but because it was the first time I had heard an artist speak about the dangers of selling out since 1997 or so. Like, the idea that your artistic output would be severely constrained by the record company execs used to be a major theme in musical circles. But around the time Britney and N'Sync and company made it big, that sort of idea just.. disappeared.
I was thinking about a lot of the artists that came up in the post-2000 generation, and how shallow their output always seemed to me. The 80s and 90s certainly had their share of brain-dead hits, but there were always artists around who were writing meaningful stuff. As of 2014, most pop artists have ceased to be artists in the way it was thought of in the 60s and 70s and are now more like pop hit machines.. they sing other people's hollow songs about money, drinking, and going out to clubs, which are carefully designed in the same way that so many of today's movies are designed - following tropes and rules and sucking the soul out of it. At the same time, these artists are very explicit that they are in it 100% for the money. No talk of "selling out" because there is nothing TO sell out - the money is the objective of their efforts and often the subject of their artistic output.
Now obviously, there are tons of artists who feel differently. But only a few examples have bubbled up into top 40, and those only very recently. Somebody was asking upthread why there haven't been many protest songs - it's because the music industry has been completely hollowed out of all artistic intent and replaced with money-making pop singers. It's going to take time for actual artists to bubble back up into the pop charts, if it even happens at all.
posted by zug at 12:36 PM on January 25, 2015 [2 favorites]
I was thinking about a lot of the artists that came up in the post-2000 generation, and how shallow their output always seemed to me. The 80s and 90s certainly had their share of brain-dead hits, but there were always artists around who were writing meaningful stuff. As of 2014, most pop artists have ceased to be artists in the way it was thought of in the 60s and 70s and are now more like pop hit machines.. they sing other people's hollow songs about money, drinking, and going out to clubs, which are carefully designed in the same way that so many of today's movies are designed - following tropes and rules and sucking the soul out of it. At the same time, these artists are very explicit that they are in it 100% for the money. No talk of "selling out" because there is nothing TO sell out - the money is the objective of their efforts and often the subject of their artistic output.
Now obviously, there are tons of artists who feel differently. But only a few examples have bubbled up into top 40, and those only very recently. Somebody was asking upthread why there haven't been many protest songs - it's because the music industry has been completely hollowed out of all artistic intent and replaced with money-making pop singers. It's going to take time for actual artists to bubble back up into the pop charts, if it even happens at all.
posted by zug at 12:36 PM on January 25, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yeah, this article made me sad. If this is all we have to hope for in terms of protest music, we're fucked. Where is today's Rage Against The Machine? Or Public Enemy? or Dead Prez?
Those hopes are pretty much on the shoulders of Run the Jewels, who were briefly discussed in the article. That's some protest music right there.
posted by The Michael The at 1:39 PM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Those hopes are pretty much on the shoulders of Run the Jewels, who were briefly discussed in the article. That's some protest music right there.
posted by The Michael The at 1:39 PM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
And earlier, WWI, WWII, and Vietnam - each resulted in great works that are still being seen or read generations later. But we have yet to see a Great work coming from 9/11, nor Great works coming from the new economic inequity, or from the militarization of our police forces and the consequence oppression of the poor and people of color (and no, 160 character Twitters probably aren't it either, though I'm welcome to URLs...)
Right, and that's precisely what I 'm saying is that the works responding to those kind of big events Take time to make, so the person upthread who was puzzled about not having seen any protest songs in response to Ferguson yet should be patient maybe, is my point.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:32 PM on January 25, 2015
Right, and that's precisely what I 'm saying is that the works responding to those kind of big events Take time to make, so the person upthread who was puzzled about not having seen any protest songs in response to Ferguson yet should be patient maybe, is my point.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:32 PM on January 25, 2015
Where is today's Rage Against The Machine? Or Public Enemy? or Dead Prez?
Amen. Ice-T has a great line in Body Count's latest album:
America's losing they cribs
Why you braggin' bout the shit you did?
All the shit that you buy, most of it lies
Yeah I know and you know I know
The government's tapping the net
Why you rappin' bout your car and check?
I miss P.E., I miss group's like Rage
this pop shit's making me physically sick
On that note there is Street Sweeper Social Club, which is another Tom Morello project, and is about the best thing for angry protest music to come along since P.E. and Rage went radio dark.
edit: I just listened to Run the Jewels, and yeah, I can see a lot of potential there as well.
posted by quin at 4:44 PM on January 25, 2015
Amen. Ice-T has a great line in Body Count's latest album:
America's losing they cribs
Why you braggin' bout the shit you did?
All the shit that you buy, most of it lies
Yeah I know and you know I know
The government's tapping the net
Why you rappin' bout your car and check?
I miss P.E., I miss group's like Rage
this pop shit's making me physically sick
On that note there is Street Sweeper Social Club, which is another Tom Morello project, and is about the best thing for angry protest music to come along since P.E. and Rage went radio dark.
edit: I just listened to Run the Jewels, and yeah, I can see a lot of potential there as well.
posted by quin at 4:44 PM on January 25, 2015
I read this a couple days ago and thought it was pretty stupid. They describe RTJ2:
"2014’s Run the Jewels 2 gave us Killer Mike and El-P shining societal frustrations and reflections on violence and police brutality through a definitively post-Yeezus lens."
Bullshit. On RTJ1 Mike explicitly disses Watch the Throne. El-P has been doing music like that for 20 years. Just because this person is only aware of large mainstream artists doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. The Kanye circlejerk is pretty irritating, but its like when "Thrift Shop" was a hit that people were saying fucking Macklemore was the best white rapper since eminem. Its not true, people just don't know about any other white rappers.
Its a pretty common thing for people to use their fandom as some way of "proving" how much better one artist or another is (see also: radiohead fans), but a lot of Kanye's popularity is that his lyrics are really simple and easy to understand (to the point of obviousness). Like, look how cheesy "Bound 2" was (song and video), yet Kanye fans were tripping over themselves trying to make it out like it was a singular work of genius.
Kanye is mainstream pop. Jay-Z is as commercial as you can possibly get. You won't hear protest music from them because THEY ARE THE ESTABLISHMENT. Jay-Z is practically a billionaire, he's got jack shit to protest about. Kanye is embarrassingly inarticulate when talking about anything other than himself. In Lou Reeds glowing review of Yeezus:
"I think he maybe had a couple of great lines already written for this song but then when he recorded the vocal, but then he just let loose with it and trusted his instincts. Because I can’t imagine actually writing down most of these lines. But that’s just me."
Right? The guy is emotional, and he makes emotionally resonant music that strikes chords with a predominantly comfortable white audience. Its the same way that Michael Moore movies are "political", but mostly just goes for emotions, contrast that with, say Adam Curtis' work. The difference between The Power of Nightmares and Farenheit 9/11 is what we're trying to find here.
Similarly, sometime in the mid-2000s these guys started getting really obsessed with winning Grammys, which I always thought was kind of bizarre. The Grammys have never had a goddamn thing to do with artistic meric, just industry sales. Like, great, you're up on the wall with Milli Vanilli and Michael Bolton.
Lupe Fisaco? HA! Go listen to "Bad Bitch" and tell me with a straight face that guy is "conscious". He got crossed off my list with that, and the B-side, where he hired someone to remake Pete Rock's T.R.O.Y. beat since Pete wouldn't license it to him and specifically asked him not to. The result? A classic beat, with a few forgettable generic "save the children" verses. Dude is a dick.
So yeah, you're not going to get anything fiercely political from a bunch of rich self-centered assholes for the same reason Mark Zuckerberg isn't going to have a summit on race relations: Because they don't fucking care and have no skin in the game.
So where is the Public Enemy? Shit, PE couldn't keep doing PE, but you really think you'll ever see Lil Wayne make a video about murdering racist politicians in Arizona? Or Drake? Or Eminem? For that matter, just keep going back in history. PM Dawn? The Beastie Boys? The Sugar Hill Gang?
Its really telling how totally off the mark this article is because they cite Jimi fucking Hendrix as protest music. Yknow, the right-wing pro-vietnam ex-military drug addict? Playing the star spangled banner at woodstock is even less political than Rage Against the Machine screaming "fuck you I won't do what you tell me". THats not a political statement, thats something for teenagers to yell at their parents when they don't want to clean their room.
Kendrick Lamar, now that guy is undeniably talented, but he's not even remotely political. Go look at that stupid shit he said about Ferguson that Azalea Banks called him out on.
So what changed in the last 40 years? Fucking EVERYTHING! Compare the gritty New York in Melle Mel's "The Message" to today. Compare the cracked out gang life and cartoonish violence of N.W.A. in Straight Outta Compton to Kendricks Good Kid Maad City, and those were produced by the same guy!
More importantly, though, the audience changed. The audience is huge and mainstream and reflects the US demographics in that its predominantly white.
Think of Childish Gambino, say, can you imagine a TV star quitting to make hip-hop about nerd culture in the mid-80s? Just think about how that describes the permeation of hip-hop in American culture.
We're in 2015. The civil rights movement was 50 years ago, not 10. Yes, there is still de facto segregation, and police violence, and drug problems. Some things have changed, some things have gotten better. We still have a long way to go, and likely always will, but these issues generally don't affect the core consumers of mainstream music: relatively affluent teenagers. What do they like? Stuff they can relate to. What is that? Being misunderstood, getting dumped, that kinda stuff. That will always sell (see also: every Taylor Swift song)
So lets step away from hip-hop for a sec, and I think I can give a really clear example of this:
English Punk. In 70's england, there was "No Future", riots, garbage strikes, crazy unemployment, etc. We get The Clash: fronted by the son of a politician, no less, fiercely political as well as fashionable, it was a product of the times and environment. fast forward 15 or so years, and we get fucking Green Day, who apes the look and sound down to the accent, but hey! No politics, what are the songs about? Boredom, not fitting in, getting dumped, sound familiar? What clash songs do you hear on the radio? Should I stay or Sould I go, and Train in Vain. 2 of their only songs that are just whining about their girlfriends. BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THEY PLAY ON THE RADIO AND MTV. Green Day had the look and attitude, but made music that was decidedly pop and mainstream. That doesn't mean that punk died, or was no longer political or anything, it just means that kids were listening to the same old themes in a style that had been fully commodified.
And thats what we got here.
Golden Era Hip-Hop was no more inherently political than 70s rock. There were political writers, and party bands, and everything in between.
I mean, what do they even mean by "protest", you want protest music, start drafting those comfortable teenagers.
So where are the new Dead Prez's, Public Enemies, the Ice Cubes, when are we going to get another "Tricks of the Shade"? For one, those guys are all still around, and occasionally
It might already be out there, but you won't find it following people who just suck industry dick and water down their music to sell records and win grammys. If you like pop and mainstream and accessible music, thats all well and good, but don't pretend that it is something other than that.
Music with a point is out there, but its a reflection of the times we're in. Danny Browns whole album "XXX" is him grappling with drug dependency. Chance's "Paranoia" is about being a normal kid and trying to reconcile being surrounded by inexplicable senseless violence. The Underachievers are about reasoning through their own spirituality while not getting sucked into Organized Religion. Vinnie Paz is militant, anti-government, pro-Islam, and has songs about the exploitation of Chinese factory workers, media exploitation of kids, and the pharmaceutical industry. Immortal Techniques whole tedious oeuvre is political. Young Gulley has a whole album about the death of Oscar Grant. Even Nas has a fiercely anti-corporate (and especially anti-Fox) track from a few years back, that he performed and got 600k signatures on a petition demanding that Fox stop being a channel of racist propaganda.
You better believe there will be some very specific music coming out and decrying the mountain of injustice that we still need to drag society over, you just aren't going to get it from pop performers, any more than Britney Spears was going to make a political statement after 9/11.
Turn off the radio. Turn off that bullshit.
posted by lkc at 8:12 PM on January 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
"2014’s Run the Jewels 2 gave us Killer Mike and El-P shining societal frustrations and reflections on violence and police brutality through a definitively post-Yeezus lens."
Bullshit. On RTJ1 Mike explicitly disses Watch the Throne. El-P has been doing music like that for 20 years. Just because this person is only aware of large mainstream artists doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. The Kanye circlejerk is pretty irritating, but its like when "Thrift Shop" was a hit that people were saying fucking Macklemore was the best white rapper since eminem. Its not true, people just don't know about any other white rappers.
Its a pretty common thing for people to use their fandom as some way of "proving" how much better one artist or another is (see also: radiohead fans), but a lot of Kanye's popularity is that his lyrics are really simple and easy to understand (to the point of obviousness). Like, look how cheesy "Bound 2" was (song and video), yet Kanye fans were tripping over themselves trying to make it out like it was a singular work of genius.
Kanye is mainstream pop. Jay-Z is as commercial as you can possibly get. You won't hear protest music from them because THEY ARE THE ESTABLISHMENT. Jay-Z is practically a billionaire, he's got jack shit to protest about. Kanye is embarrassingly inarticulate when talking about anything other than himself. In Lou Reeds glowing review of Yeezus:
"I think he maybe had a couple of great lines already written for this song but then when he recorded the vocal, but then he just let loose with it and trusted his instincts. Because I can’t imagine actually writing down most of these lines. But that’s just me."
Right? The guy is emotional, and he makes emotionally resonant music that strikes chords with a predominantly comfortable white audience. Its the same way that Michael Moore movies are "political", but mostly just goes for emotions, contrast that with, say Adam Curtis' work. The difference between The Power of Nightmares and Farenheit 9/11 is what we're trying to find here.
Similarly, sometime in the mid-2000s these guys started getting really obsessed with winning Grammys, which I always thought was kind of bizarre. The Grammys have never had a goddamn thing to do with artistic meric, just industry sales. Like, great, you're up on the wall with Milli Vanilli and Michael Bolton.
Lupe Fisaco? HA! Go listen to "Bad Bitch" and tell me with a straight face that guy is "conscious". He got crossed off my list with that, and the B-side, where he hired someone to remake Pete Rock's T.R.O.Y. beat since Pete wouldn't license it to him and specifically asked him not to. The result? A classic beat, with a few forgettable generic "save the children" verses. Dude is a dick.
So yeah, you're not going to get anything fiercely political from a bunch of rich self-centered assholes for the same reason Mark Zuckerberg isn't going to have a summit on race relations: Because they don't fucking care and have no skin in the game.
So where is the Public Enemy? Shit, PE couldn't keep doing PE, but you really think you'll ever see Lil Wayne make a video about murdering racist politicians in Arizona? Or Drake? Or Eminem? For that matter, just keep going back in history. PM Dawn? The Beastie Boys? The Sugar Hill Gang?
Its really telling how totally off the mark this article is because they cite Jimi fucking Hendrix as protest music. Yknow, the right-wing pro-vietnam ex-military drug addict? Playing the star spangled banner at woodstock is even less political than Rage Against the Machine screaming "fuck you I won't do what you tell me". THats not a political statement, thats something for teenagers to yell at their parents when they don't want to clean their room.
Kendrick Lamar, now that guy is undeniably talented, but he's not even remotely political. Go look at that stupid shit he said about Ferguson that Azalea Banks called him out on.
So what changed in the last 40 years? Fucking EVERYTHING! Compare the gritty New York in Melle Mel's "The Message" to today. Compare the cracked out gang life and cartoonish violence of N.W.A. in Straight Outta Compton to Kendricks Good Kid Maad City, and those were produced by the same guy!
More importantly, though, the audience changed. The audience is huge and mainstream and reflects the US demographics in that its predominantly white.
Think of Childish Gambino, say, can you imagine a TV star quitting to make hip-hop about nerd culture in the mid-80s? Just think about how that describes the permeation of hip-hop in American culture.
We're in 2015. The civil rights movement was 50 years ago, not 10. Yes, there is still de facto segregation, and police violence, and drug problems. Some things have changed, some things have gotten better. We still have a long way to go, and likely always will, but these issues generally don't affect the core consumers of mainstream music: relatively affluent teenagers. What do they like? Stuff they can relate to. What is that? Being misunderstood, getting dumped, that kinda stuff. That will always sell (see also: every Taylor Swift song)
So lets step away from hip-hop for a sec, and I think I can give a really clear example of this:
English Punk. In 70's england, there was "No Future", riots, garbage strikes, crazy unemployment, etc. We get The Clash: fronted by the son of a politician, no less, fiercely political as well as fashionable, it was a product of the times and environment. fast forward 15 or so years, and we get fucking Green Day, who apes the look and sound down to the accent, but hey! No politics, what are the songs about? Boredom, not fitting in, getting dumped, sound familiar? What clash songs do you hear on the radio? Should I stay or Sould I go, and Train in Vain. 2 of their only songs that are just whining about their girlfriends. BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THEY PLAY ON THE RADIO AND MTV. Green Day had the look and attitude, but made music that was decidedly pop and mainstream. That doesn't mean that punk died, or was no longer political or anything, it just means that kids were listening to the same old themes in a style that had been fully commodified.
And thats what we got here.
Golden Era Hip-Hop was no more inherently political than 70s rock. There were political writers, and party bands, and everything in between.
I mean, what do they even mean by "protest", you want protest music, start drafting those comfortable teenagers.
So where are the new Dead Prez's, Public Enemies, the Ice Cubes, when are we going to get another "Tricks of the Shade"? For one, those guys are all still around, and occasionally
It might already be out there, but you won't find it following people who just suck industry dick and water down their music to sell records and win grammys. If you like pop and mainstream and accessible music, thats all well and good, but don't pretend that it is something other than that.
Music with a point is out there, but its a reflection of the times we're in. Danny Browns whole album "XXX" is him grappling with drug dependency. Chance's "Paranoia" is about being a normal kid and trying to reconcile being surrounded by inexplicable senseless violence. The Underachievers are about reasoning through their own spirituality while not getting sucked into Organized Religion. Vinnie Paz is militant, anti-government, pro-Islam, and has songs about the exploitation of Chinese factory workers, media exploitation of kids, and the pharmaceutical industry. Immortal Techniques whole tedious oeuvre is political. Young Gulley has a whole album about the death of Oscar Grant. Even Nas has a fiercely anti-corporate (and especially anti-Fox) track from a few years back, that he performed and got 600k signatures on a petition demanding that Fox stop being a channel of racist propaganda.
You better believe there will be some very specific music coming out and decrying the mountain of injustice that we still need to drag society over, you just aren't going to get it from pop performers, any more than Britney Spears was going to make a political statement after 9/11.
Turn off the radio. Turn off that bullshit.
posted by lkc at 8:12 PM on January 25, 2015 [4 favorites]
Missed the edit window: Lupe / Pete Rock reference. I know they reconciled, it was still pretty lame.
posted by lkc at 8:20 PM on January 25, 2015
posted by lkc at 8:20 PM on January 25, 2015
New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis DeBerry wrote about this in today's paper, and also mentioned this Atlantic piece.
[Shalamishah Tillet] lists "Glory," the song by John Legend and Common from the film "Selma" as one example. She also lists the songs "Be Free" by J. Cole and "Black Rage" by Lauryn Hill and "Black Messiah, the new D'Angelo CD. "And she quotes Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, bandleader of The Roots, who recently urged other musicians to "push themselves to be a voice of the times ...DeBerry himself highlighted Erykah Badu, who closed out ExhibitBE, which he described thusly:
Imagine a Jazzfest that's accessible to working class folks. Imagine an Essence Fest that's free and doesn't rank artists according to album sales. Imagine the 1972 Wattstax music festival, which deliberately paired revolutionary politics with soul music. Imagine Dave Chappelle's "Block Party," a 2004 concert in Brooklyn that recreated WattStax, but with hip-hop.posted by Corinth at 10:04 PM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
I heard Kendrick in a one-off track on Spotify recently where there was definitely a sort of self-hating, "stop making us all look bad, fellow black people" vibe...My People.
Counter example, Kris Kross "Da Streets Ain't Right" [lyrics] which is awesomely produced by the way but otherwise a pretty shallow meh song -- it's sampled from "Talking in your sleep" and I could never figure that out for months after hearing the beat slowed down over and over (and randomly singing the Romantics lyrics out loud) in DJ-Screw related tracks like this [this is the one to listen to] or this [Drake glomming on that third coast Houston vibe].
This is all wraught and complex, but I've definitely gotten the bit of a self-hating vibe from Kendrick, and also separately, the distinct, very specific feeling that he's currently into exploring mental health topics and specifically has danced around (or entertained) the fact that he's fixated on understanding white kids (or members of an "unexpected fan base" -- not exactly a direct quote) who have pretty much all of their basic needs met in life and are privileged, but are suicidally depressed and hopeless and are somehow inspired by his story of coming up broke surrounded by gangs and anxiety (based on some recent YouTube interviews like I think this one).
posted by aydeejones at 11:29 PM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Genocide all we know shit, we basically in the KKKIt's basically the "what about black on black crime?" refrain ending with "I'm rich, stop trying to trying to take that away from me." That's all well and good, but it's as deep as "The Streets Ain't Right" by Kris Kross, and papers over the story of poverty and crumbling opportunities that is supposed to be told by albums like GKMC.
OK-K-K, I'm trying to make my cake
But every time I turn around you take it from me
Counter example, Kris Kross "Da Streets Ain't Right" [lyrics] which is awesomely produced by the way but otherwise a pretty shallow meh song -- it's sampled from "Talking in your sleep" and I could never figure that out for months after hearing the beat slowed down over and over (and randomly singing the Romantics lyrics out loud) in DJ-Screw related tracks like this [this is the one to listen to] or this [Drake glomming on that third coast Houston vibe].
Niggas in da street ain't right(He's complaining about the threat of violence against him not in a theoretical pre-success story, but in terms of jealous haters trying to steal his money, which just kinda comes off as a little spoiled and whiny)
Every other day I keep strugglin' to keep my life
And I never know when I gotta go, so I stay strapped
Cause niggas they don't know how to act
This is all wraught and complex, but I've definitely gotten the bit of a self-hating vibe from Kendrick, and also separately, the distinct, very specific feeling that he's currently into exploring mental health topics and specifically has danced around (or entertained) the fact that he's fixated on understanding white kids (or members of an "unexpected fan base" -- not exactly a direct quote) who have pretty much all of their basic needs met in life and are privileged, but are suicidally depressed and hopeless and are somehow inspired by his story of coming up broke surrounded by gangs and anxiety (based on some recent YouTube interviews like I think this one).
posted by aydeejones at 11:29 PM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Jay-Z is practically a billionaire, he's got jack shit to protest about.
Made me think of...
Made me think of...
You really made it or just became a prisoner of privilege?posted by The Michael The at 7:49 AM on January 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
You willing to share that information that you’ve been given?
Like who really run this?
Like who really run that man that say he run this?
Who who really run that man that say he run this, run run run run this?
Like who really fund this?
Like who really fund who say he fund this?
Like who in the world gon' tell Donald Sterl who to put on the “you can’t come” list?
Now don’t be silly
Who the fuck gon' bully me if I got a billi?
If I got a billi and the bitch recording me I’m like who cares
What I wouldn’t be is on TV stutterin' ta-ta-talkin' scared
So the question is when Don’s at home with that traitor ass bitch alone
Who’s that voice on the side of the phone that shakes and rattles his bones?
Could it be the man behind the man behind the man behind the throne?
The Grantland writer exhorts us to "listen up" but then goes on to say no one can reach the "incomparable Gaye," which kind of goes without saying, but all the same, if you're pushing the latest crop of "protest artists," admitting that they have a low bar to clear is kind of defeatist, isn't it? In any case, Black Messiah and the like are incredible -- and on their own terms. You don't have to apologize for them by shrugging and offhandedly acknowledging that they aren't What's Going On. Nothing is, nor would you ideally want it to be; What's Going On is more often these days used as anesthetic (or what used to be known as MUZAK) anyway, "crown jewel of American music" or not.
We get The Clash: fronted by the son of a politician, no less, fiercely political as well as fashionable, it was a product of the times and environment. fast forward 15 or so years, and we get fucking Green Day, who apes the look and sound down to the accent, but hey! No politics, what are the songs about? Boredom, not fitting in, getting dumped, sound familiar?
The Clash wrote about condoms, ping-pong clubs, and boredom as well as dole lines and inequality. Green Day always seemed to me to owe as much (if not more) to The Who as The Clash, especially in their later stuff, and The Who weren't ever particularly political, at least not in the ripped-from-the-headlines punk sense. Neither were Green Day. And as you yourself imply, the only Clash songs that ever get played today anyway are "Rock the Casbah" (usually as an anthem of chest-thumping imperialist triumphalism), "Train in Vain," and "Should I Stay or Should I Go."
posted by blucevalo at 8:20 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
We get The Clash: fronted by the son of a politician, no less, fiercely political as well as fashionable, it was a product of the times and environment. fast forward 15 or so years, and we get fucking Green Day, who apes the look and sound down to the accent, but hey! No politics, what are the songs about? Boredom, not fitting in, getting dumped, sound familiar?
The Clash wrote about condoms, ping-pong clubs, and boredom as well as dole lines and inequality. Green Day always seemed to me to owe as much (if not more) to The Who as The Clash, especially in their later stuff, and The Who weren't ever particularly political, at least not in the ripped-from-the-headlines punk sense. Neither were Green Day. And as you yourself imply, the only Clash songs that ever get played today anyway are "Rock the Casbah" (usually as an anthem of chest-thumping imperialist triumphalism), "Train in Vain," and "Should I Stay or Should I Go."
posted by blucevalo at 8:20 AM on January 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
the michael the: Made me think of...
Right. Which is why describing Run The Jewels 2 as being through a Yeezus lens is fucking moronic, like everything else about this article.
posted by lkc at 2:44 AM on January 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
Right. Which is why describing Run The Jewels 2 as being through a Yeezus lens is fucking moronic, like everything else about this article.
posted by lkc at 2:44 AM on January 27, 2015 [2 favorites]
Right. Which is why describing Run The Jewels 2 as being through a Yeezus lens is fucking moronic, like everything else about this article.
100 million percent correct.
posted by The Michael The at 8:39 AM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
100 million percent correct.
posted by The Michael The at 8:39 AM on January 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
blucevalo: Wow, I never thought about Green Day having a big The Who streak, and just listened to the first 30 seconds of Longview and totally get that. At least with the drums. The Who (and Led Zepplin) is a good go-to example of the difference between American and British music during that era. Britain wasn't involved in Vietnam, and it was before the big social collapse, so it had all the hippy-dippy partiness without the "protest" side of things. Rock songs about hobbits and pinball and whathaveyou.
posted by lkc at 2:20 PM on January 27, 2015
posted by lkc at 2:20 PM on January 27, 2015
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This is, of course, not a new complaint in any way, but I wish venues like Grantland would dig a little deeper than the Billboard 100 when looking for new protest music to write about.
Great to see D'Angelo getting so much positive press though! I don't even like his music, but the dude is clearly a singular talent and deserves all the praise, especially after waiting so long to reappear.
posted by still bill at 6:21 AM on January 25, 2015 [1 favorite]