A Tribe Called Quest: “The Space Program” (2016)Ī Tribe Called Quest have never been conscious or woke in the way that so many of the best-intentioned rappers are. Listen: Sons of Kemet, “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman”ġ77. Drawing on many musical heritages, “Harriet Tubman” also moves forward, its sound igniting the spirit of all future freedom fighters. And then there’s Hutchings’ own breathless solo, his staccato shrieks matching the rapidfire flow of grime. But UK sounds also bubble up on the track, from the punk sneer inherent in that title to the dubstep wobble in tuba player Theon Cross’ huffed frequencies. Meanwhile, do-it-yourself Tubman rubber stamps are perpetually out of stock, suggesting that many Americans might concur with Sons of Kemet and the British-born, Barbados-raised saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings’ bold declaration that “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman.” The unrelenting highlight of the band’s Impulse! debut, Your Queen Is a Reptile, “Harriet Tubman” unites African-American jazz and Afro-Caribbean soca. Treasury Secretary continues to balk at the rollout of a new $20 bill featuring abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Sons of Kemet: “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” (2018) This is Frank’s gift, the ability to build worlds of meaning and emotion into a song that has the casual grace of a freestyle. Beneath it all, there’s a romantic ripple, too, as a relationship that seemed casual and disposable is revealed, almost shyly, to mean something more.
Listen closely, and “Chanel” also reveals itself to be a meditation on masculinity, one that alternately embraces it, subverts it, and points out its absurdity. It’s all about Frank and the places his words can take you: a heated swimming pool in the hills, a Tokyo back alley, the first-class lounge at the Delta terminal. The piano chords are simple and translucent the beat ambles casually. There isn’t much to it in terms of melody or structure. “Chanel” is the first and best of them, capturing an artist in total command of his faculties as a singer, writer, and rapper. Listen: J Balvin / Willy William, “Mi Gente (Remix)” Īfter releasing Blonde in 2016, Frank Ocean spent the next year trickling out a series of singles that built upon that album’s fluid confidence. It remains a testament to pop music’s ability to push back against growing neo-nationalist fervor-there was no border, no wall, that could keep people from coming together and loving this song. Aided on the remix by Beyoncé, who audaciously tackles Spanish and ups the diva ante, “Mi Gente” became the first all-Spanish song to reach the top of Spotify’s Global Top 50 chart. His lines like “el mundo nos quiere” (“the world wants us”) transform the song into a universal call to the dancefloor, an embrace of solidarity and unification at a time of enormous worldwide polarization.
No wonder “Mi Gente” was such a global, cross-culture sensation.īalvin worked with William to reinvent the source material, adding Spanish lyrics, chants, and ferocious Latin percussion. Much of what makes Colombian singer J Balvin’s “Mi Gente” sizzle-that audacious drumbeat, that insistent five-note vocal melody-is lifted from Mauritian-French singer Willy William’s 2017 track “Voodoo Song,” which itself reinterprets a sample from the Indian composer Akassh.
J Balvin / Willy William: “Mi Gente (Remix)” (2017)
But his actual relationship to such sources could be hard to read: Was Maus poking fun at music’s power to manufacture an emotional response, like when we find ourselves crying in the middle of a commercial, or celebrating its potential to offer us a fleeting moment of ecstasy, a glimpse of a world that is better than our own? Arriving at the end of 2011’s We Must Be the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves with the cathartic finality of perfectly curated exit music, this song-with its glittering harpsichord arpeggios, briskly pulsing bass, and grandiose allusions to borderless love-is the closest Maus has ever come to being a true believer. Like many of his lo-fi pop contemporaries in the early ’10s, reclusive Midwesterner John Maus pushed underground music forward by looking backward-rejecting digital studio techniques in favor of old drum machines and wonky synths, excavating the dramatic excesses of ’80s stadium pop and sentimental radio jingles as though they held clues to some hard-to-pinpoint generational subconscious.
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