There are more words about music than music today. People are asking a persistent question: Given our endless Middle East wars, threats to our Constitutional rights, growing income inequality, and the continuing of violence against blacks by our police, “Where is the protest music?”
Maybe we are looking in the wrong places. There has been an avalanche of provocative hip-hop and R&B, known generally as “black liberation music” around for years. Recently, it has become more thoughtful, and for whites in America, more accessible. Gawker has an article that provides a discussion of what it is about, and which artists are leading the genre.
Today, let’s focus on three artists, D’Angelo, who, in January, released an album, “Black Messiah” 14 years after his last effort. The title song has these lyrics:
Some will jump to the conclusion that I am calling myself a Black Messiah,
For me the title is about all of us…It’s about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt
And in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough,
And decides to make change happen.
It’s not about celebrating one charismatic leader, but celebrating thousands of them.
The New York Times Magazine’s Jay Caspian King features another Messiah of the moment, Kendrick Lamar. His new album, “To Pimp a Butterfly”, has just been released. The first video released is for the song, “i“, that speaks of his experience in Compton, CA:
They wanna say there’s a war outside and a bomb in the street
And a gun in the hood and a mob of police
And a rock on the corner and a line full of fiends…
Finally, J Cole released a new album in December, “Forest Hills Drive”. Here is “Intro”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hh-gGb0Mvk
Sample Lyric:
I said do you wanna, do you wanna be, free
Free from pain, free from scars
Free to sing, free from bars
Free my dawgs, you’re free to go
Block gets shot, the streets is cold
Free to love, to each his own
Free from bills, free from pills
You roll it loud, the speakers blow
Life get hard, you eat your soul
This song asks questions that the all of us must answer for ourselves. We live in a very structured, high-stress, work hard or get left behind society.
Do you wanna be happy? Do you wanna be free?
The answers to these questions are clearly, “YES” for everybody. Cole makes listeners think about what they are doing with their lives, and what really matters.
The Gawker article quotes Matthew McKnight of the New Yorker Magazine: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
I don’t think it’s an accident that we have all these Black artists who were born around the same time and who are now making art that urges on liberation. America produced us. If there’s any clarity that we can derive from the different stories being told…it’s that a lot of people are fed up.
Kendrick might be one of the few Hip Hop artists who doesn’t want what whiteness affords white people:
And I will die knowing that this white racial supremacy shit has fucked with white folks psychologically, intellectually, and soulfully more than it’s fucked with any of us.
White supremacy is deeply ingrained, so deeply, that in fact, most aren’t even aware they’re infected.
Speaking from the perspective of an artist (BNF, MFA) I suggest that there is less protest music (not none as your point out) because the times have changed. Just as teens in the 60s seemed each to have a garage band, and city kids a few years earlier sung on the corner, so the current era young folks just have a different set of interests. The tweet constantly and live by their phones, but sound does not emerge.