Seriously just ONE or Two songs that change the course. I laugh & have fun w “Bitch You Guessed It” like everyone else. Protest songs don’t have to be boring or non danceable or ready made for the next Olympics. & when I say challenge I don’t mean breathless race to the finish on who makes the more banging “Fuck Tha Police” sequel. I’m not saying every song gotta be “Fight The Power” but in times like these we need to be more community minded (taking a wild guess that “urban radio’s” format didn’t change much from the pre program stuff (using that word *politely*) we’ve been hearing for years. Yeah I’m just as guilty of feeling the high of all that I despise (“Devil’s Pie” D’angelo) but the reason why this nation seems to be moving 3 steps ahead in some areas….but then 7 steps backwards in every area is a lack of balance.
New ideas! But it just doesn’t stop there!! We need outlets (hello #ClearChannel #RadioOne #Vh1) to balance the system. I know that many see what happened to Dixie Chicks’ #NatalieMaines (she bravely expressed her opinion/dismay on the Bush administration declaring war & was unjustly targeted….while in hindsight being CORRECT) suddenly there was an onslaught of radio silence from artists across the board (correction not everyone was silent, but the silence was deafening) although I’m kinda/sorta addressing the hip hop nation I really apply this challenge to ALL artists. I urge and challenge musicians and artists alike to push themselves to be a voice of the times that we live in. It’s unclear if Kendrick Lamarconsciously accepted that challenge, but this week’s episode about his Grammy-award winning single “Alright” explores how it was exactly what Questlove, and the world at large, needed. The deafening silence he heard through the celebratory music of the time led him to go on Instagram in December 2014 and challenge all artists to make protest songs. That was Questlove in this week’s episode of Hip-Hop: Songs That Shook America speaking on the lack of socially conscious music in the wake of countless police killings of Black people. This isn’t just a one-time thing where this unarmed Black person gets killed for no reason. The latest episode took a close look at Kendrick Lamar’s masterpiece “Alright,” the defining protest anthem of our time. Photo Credit: Christopher Polk/BET/Getty Images for BET AMC’s Hip Hop: The Songs That Shook America is a docu-series that will focus on six individual rap songs that changed the genre.
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