Skip to 1:42 if you only wanna see the messy stuff. Its an interesting tune and I like that they randomly incorporated WAM into the video. The production quality is pretty good too.

https://youtu.be/xuQ70CPSKTo

Absolute shite rap "music" but damn the ten seconds the paint babes were on screen, they're gorgeous.

Yeah, this gets significantly better with the sound off. So, so done with political rants atm.

On the other hand, smarty-pants political analysis says I DO appreciate the implied shout out to the Green Party as a vital alternative to the tired old Red vs Blue political paradigm.

And the dropdead gorgeous round titties and sexy-ass legs
also send a HUGE positive political message: I LIKE SEX!

As regards to entertainers pretending they offer anything of value towards practical political action, see Bill Maher's video New Rule: The Baldy Awards. (Though I cringe at Maher's choice of whom he targets in that video.)

Such a nice, wholesome, family-friendly video.


(If some political science professor needs and example of 'grievance politics' in 21st century America, they need look no further; the vid's a gold mine of anti-gov propaganda-fed political hatred, ignorance and distrust. Gawd bless these United States!)

Time to get my big fuck off political science masters and degree out.

Rap has always been political with its roots in a form of hip hop that emerged from the internal colonies (if your so inclined to call the ghettos that, Harry Haywood the like seemed keen on the idea and their analysis holds up). Problem these days is thanks to neoliberalism that this current has been marketized to fuck so barely holds a finger to the hey day of political music that REALLY fucked off rich cunts and their scab parasite pals. Body Counts Cop Killer remains the pinnacle of this, an absolute fuckin tune of a song with a message so clear and strong it got banned by the powers that be. Unfortunately, you cant get close to that as no label would touch it, so less blatant signalling is sent out that targets hyper medialised celebrity politicos who soak up most of the discourse culture rather than institutions.

Hip Hop by Ded Prez is another key fragment of this highlighting the money dilution of hip hop by record companies who profit from real anger and dilute it for mass consumption. Also its key to point out that this trend in music is not just limited to rap. Ohio by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was banned on most radio stations cos it directly challenged the Nixon administration fresh off the Kent state massacre. So nothing new really comes from the current trend although its ability to still turn some heads is good shit but never quite gets to the same point that NWA or The Coup were driving at with political hip hops hey day.

Still surprises me though that peeps think music and politics can be separated. Like there exists a group of people who get really disappointed when they realise that Rage Against The Machine are communists as if they haven't listened to the fuckin music at all. Its like looking at Guernica by Picasso and then getting fucked off cos Pablo's as red as Stalin and the painting is an anti fascist piece of work.

Main point is music doesn't aggravate nor necessarily cause political discontent but actually reflects it and emerges as a reaction to world events. This reflection then either does arts main job. It either sells records or raises conscience. If people don't dig what music reflects on yankee society, then you should probs take a deep look at ya history and see whats been going on. FBI collusion with Klansmen and Nazi hitmen, COINTELPRO murdering activists with immunity and hiring out School of Americas rightists to torture and kill across continent will always generate more discontent than a simple record. The record simply exists to tell an already prevalent story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH8gUhDd6WE&ab_channel=thechannelsurfin100
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTLPv6pcalA&ab_channel=MardukNox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t9iCI9wXlU&ab_channel=sandman9331
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXXS9bpgvqQ&ab_channel=DanCarrone

Holy God damn shit! A dead prez reference AND a coup reference...fuckin respect dude! Real hip hop fans still exist, that's what's up!

I totally have a copy of the first run of the body count CDs in my collection. When I found my way through the rave scene in the mid 90s in the midwest, there was a big presence of hiphop along with the techno/trance/house elements. It wasn't uncommon to see RUN DMC or De La Soul at a warehouse rave. I actually have an autographed "it's like that" shirt from a show in Cleveland.

Wanting to keep that feeling alive in the shows that I throw, I booked the legendary Kool Keith to headline Bubble Bobble 6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzhWY4gitQc

The younger generation of ravers totally didn't get it and I actually took some heat for booking a hiphop act for rave event, but eh whatever it's my damned show and I'll book who I want to!

And now a De La Soul reference...the music talk in this thread and the music tastes of the ppl in it is warming my heart lol I fuckin love de la! Most underrated group ever in all of hip hop, Wonce again Long Island off of Stakes is High is a top 3 favorite song of mine of all time, any genre, any era, any anything lol still got ppl out there with good taste in music, it's awesome!

Holy shit you booked Kool Keith. Definitely my favourite rapper of all time. Don't think there's been a guy as influential whilst maintaining a conscientious great output like him. For my money, Sex Style is not just one of the greatest rap albums of all time but one of the best underrated albums full stop

https://youtu.be/xQX5_zSWKws

It was amazing and an honor to have him grace my stage. And to the folks who got miffed at me for booking a hiphop act at a rave I simply fired back "You do realize he provided vocals for a track by The Prodigy right?!!?" it don't get much more rave than that.

YASSS! i do not talk politics bc it sincerely makes me anxious BUT respect on the hip hop knowledge. i am a sincere fan of some old school hip hop and the new guys keeping shit awesome. just opened up one of my "felt" (atmosphere and murs) albums "a tribute to lisa bonet" the other day to pole to (which is more of a feel good album...there is no political ranting in there....ranting about shittty humans CAN be considered political i suppose but the rest is just legit lyricists and feel good stuff) ....it took me 2 years to get up the nerve to unwrap it! digging the references! hell, i was just listening to the new run the jewels and the whole album is very politically charged. i dont mind it. hip hop is a platform. agreed and agreed.

Northern WAM:

I'm not quite sure to whom your (unnecessary) politico-historical lesson in hip-hop-etry was intended for (or in response to)...but thanks! (PS: I'm not sure a Masters in Poly Sci is necessary to use google).

But, you wrote:

"Still surprises me though that peeps think music and politics can be separated."

I hope you didn't think that my sarcastic comment was an argument for separating politics from music...? No sir!

(BTW, check out Regina King's 'One Night in Miami' for a historical grounding of this issue [politics v. music] specifically: Malcolm X and Sam Cook's dialogues).

Anyways, If your multi-media lecture was in response to my brief (critical) comment, I think I may have some insight:

Don't confuse substance with style (which is admittedly challenging with some pop /hip hop / rap these days)...my criticism concerned the CONTENT of what he was saying, not the musical genre he chose to say it with. The substance/content of his rap is cobbled from conspiracies, partisan bigotries, and hateful innuendo (some coming 'straight-outa-Conman's [Trump's] mouth).

Surely you are not arguing that rap lyrics are beyond reproach ? (huh, I first spelled that word 'rap -proach', funny)

Consider the literary genre of Biography / Autobiography. I love reading biographies and auto-biographies. Trump wrote (or had ghost-written for him) an autobiography called "Art of the Deal'...but it was filled with lies, put-downs, defamation, raving egotism, and generally narcissistic puerile crap about taking revenge on his enemies. If only more people had read it and understood who this guy was (or pretended to be), we might have been spared 4 years of cultural-political decay. I digress.

The point is: I can critique the content and still enjoy the form. Dig?

Groovy.

And anyways, M&M did that shtick better, imo.

(personal historical note: I spent a good amount of time in NYC / Brooklyn in the early 80's...I was listening to black spoken word on the streets before it ever hit MTV).

I'll have you know it cost me 9 grand a year for that course to teach me how to use Google, worth every bleedin penny like.

But seriously, nah I aint havin a go at anyone specific just a general mood I was gettin that seemed angsty over the music political overlap. I was mainly on about how the political culture of modern music seems watered down and you get examples such as your own. That being said everything i mentioned holds up. Yankee coppers still wanted Cop Killer banned as if the song and not their actions was gonna start an uprising. And people still get cunted that musicians might have something half decent to say about the world cos they like their entertainers to just be plastic robots who only exist on their screens. But no nowts beyond reproach but shits often done half arsed and milktoast so critical reasoning falls flat on its fuckin face most of the time. Can tally that up to the current state of modern journalism who are mostly just fuckin hacks and so thats the pedestal at the mo. Hence my lengthy rant dispels all subtlety and attempts at whit and simply gets to straight to the point. I'll do my best to add a joke at the end next time so people dont think Im a some cunt.

In all honesty I just needed an excuse to bust out my google searching..... I mean political science skills. Just wait till ya hear my fuckin take disco being the real punk movement. Shit'll blow ya mind.

Glad you dig my 4am drunken rants anyhow, what can i say i get a whiff of owt political and I flood the site with dialectical materialist reasoning. Like i said got to the 60 grand degree for something, might as well be this (oh and also to post The Coup and Ded Prez vids, entirely necessary and relevant on a WAM forum if you ask me)

I'm cool with that.

you wrote:

"...disco being the real punk movement. Shit'll blow ya mind."

...waiting for mind to be blown.

Fuck I've got something to live up to now, well I'll try.

The take essentially goes that the foundation of the punk movement at least in Britain was born out of pure contempt and cynicism for the ideas it allegedly stood for. At the pinnacle of this was the Sex Pistols who ended up looking like more like a fashion club selling bourgeois shit from pretentious Londoners thinking they're Situationists with none of the skill or analysis which made the Debordists so special. In the end and after a surprising short while, what we see as the mainstream of the punk movement becomes a parody of itself with posers donning swastikas and the music turning to utter shit with 3 cords and nee rhythm. Post punk actually ended up capturing more of what was meant through pure nostalgia than the original punks ever managed doing.

Meanwhile disco music, often seen as novelty and commercial actually stayed true to its radical roots and managed to have a far more dramatic and radical end than the punk movement could ever muster up. This is mainly cos disco found its foundations in the
marginalized communities of gay, Latino, transgender, African-American people in New York stemming directly from the Stonewall riots of 1969. And this presented a direct contradiction within yankee society, especially in Manhattan where anti gay laws were deliberately strict against the gay disco scene (there was laws about I think it was illegal for men to dance together, but also laws that had tried to shut down certain businesses selling liquor and cos of this these spaces were often run by the fucking mafia).

The fact that disco music had despite all this managed to break out, become mainstream and give a real voice in the arts for working class communities and did something that the traditional punks couldn't do (many were from middle class families playing pretend, a common trope for bands in England. Any who didnt soon became scabs later on in life, the direction of the punk band Crisis to Death in June maybe the pinnacle of this). The culmination of this is two things. One, the fact that Andrea True, a porn star, managed to have a hit with More, More, More a sexually explicit song which talks openly about her career in pornography. Unheard of from anyone, never mind a woman in the mid 70s (leading to her concerts being picketed by far right groups) showcasing a real power to this genre that gives it real punk credentials.

The second is the Disco Demolition Night which is when the movement is driven back underground in what is essentially a race riot (people burned any records they had which had black singers on not merely disco songs, Marvin Gaye records were burned for instance). Nile Rodgers likened the event to Nazi book burning but Gloria Gaynor makes the main point when she says "I've always believed it was an economic decision--an idea created by someone whose economic bottom line was being adversely affected by the popularity of disco music. So they got a mob mentality going." Similarly Dave Marsh said ""white males, eighteen to thirty-four are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, blacks, and Latins, and therefore they're the most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security. It goes almost without saying that such appeals are racist and sexist, but broadcasting has never been an especially civil-libertarian medium." This dramatic end points to the music's power still despite its commercial to really threaten norms, something punk always wanted to do but never seemed to quite manage. Sure punk had a moral outrage but never to the extent the movement was driven directly underground, in fact both sides gladly profited from the outrage a lot of the time. Disco never had that, its roots seemingly too threatening for the moment

And thats that. Take it with a hint of something mind cos it is me shit talking but the point essentially goes that everything punk thought it did and was representing was actually being done by underground DJ's, down and out singers and late night dancers at the same time if not earlier.

NorthernWAM:

Golly, that was something! (note: any screed that starts with a reference to Guy Debord has got my dollar!)

You make some interesting points -- especially the drawing of a direct line from Stonewall to the NY disco scene...I remember the "disco demolition" event(s) and was initially (as a teen) puzzled by it (not really understanding the underground club culture that grew it)...I thought it was weird for people to destroy any cultural product (books, music -- even if I was ambivalent about the quality of that product, like with disco...let's be honest, outside of the clubs [and drugs], not high-quality music, but perhaps not intended to be, only fun, like sugary junk food).

Yes, it was racist, sexist (you forgot 'homophobic').

The observation that disco was 'driven underground' (as opposed to punk rock [which many latter day punkers would refuse to acknowledge) is a fascinating observation...I do see it re-emerging in the late 1980s/early 90s with 'house music' (vis a vis the Chicago DJ scene, Atkins et al)...would you concur?

Aye I'd concur. It is something that with disco being driven back underground with the closing of the clubs and the impact of AIDS on marginalized communities you get music being played in well.... peoples houses and from this underground you get more drug taking (of speed and cocaine in particular) and from this you get faster tempos, longer records and louder music. The post disco age of dance is just as probs even more radical than discos emergence and its re-emergence speaks to that music's power in its ability to give us house music and techno, helped along with by the economic necessity of using synthesisers as well as the European influence of Italo Disco (specially Giorgio Moroder).

It is telling mind that even with this re-emergence you see the same prejudices and fightback that occurred with disco. Here in the UK specifically, the birth of Acid House had profound effects on the emergence of the rave scene and the relationship of that scene with the powers that be (since most of these outdoor raves were taking pace in the Home Counties, the Tories used all their might to drive the scene back further underground leading to many clashes between cops and youth which still even occurs these days).

It is quite telling that the same cycle emerges over and over again with the music becoming "mainstreamed" (i.e. less black and queer) and then finding its roots once again when its driven forcibly of pop culture. Still though, speaks to the power of this music that throughout its history it has been fucked off and beaten yet still comes back time and again with even greater sounds.

I'd heartedly recommend this documentary and just how impactful post disco was over here. Its quite a story like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thr8PUAQuag&ab_channel=TheSoundOfTheUnderground

Tahanks for the link tot video doc...i will watch the entire thing (i hour long) this weekend.

I will only note that I do support free expression*...and that Chris Webby's rap was not entirely antithetical to my thinking; his (surprisingly) progressive (and anti-corporate) stance on environment policy (see 04:30 minute mark) is an example...so, it's a mixed bag.

Oh, the wam content was OK (pretty girls, bikinis) but the rap-over was ridiculously sexist/misogynistic, in parts....again, he's a mixed bag of hate-infused, aggressive, macho, vitriol.

It will take me weeks to cleanse him from my engrams.