Black Cat Bone

sneelock wrote:I agree with all that but did Beyonce at the Super Bowl “tell us how to think”?
I think black crossover artists putting feelings about race into their art is a really great thing

sloopjohnc wrote:

sneelock wrote:I agree with all that but did Beyonce at the Super Bowl “tell us how to think”?
I think black crossover artists putting feelings about race into their art is a really great thing

I do too when they relate it to their own lives. Just don't tell me how I should think.

Fuck the Police is a great song because it comes from a very personal perspective. Not necessarily mine, but it gives insight into someone else's. But it doesn't tell me I have to feel that way. Just where the artist is coming from.

gash on ignore wrote:

sloopjohnc wrote:

sneelock wrote:I agree with all that but did Beyonce at the Super Bowl “tell us how to think”?
I think black crossover artists putting feelings about race into their art is a really great thing

I do too when they relate it to their own lives. Just don't tell me how I should think.

Fuck the Police is a great song because it comes from a very personal perspective. Not necessarily mine, but it gives insight into someone else's. But it doesn't tell me I have to feel that way. Just where the artist is coming from.

Why assume they’re talking to you* anyway?

Black America is talking to itself, it’s time to shut up and listen.

*not you specifically

sloopjohnc wrote:

Hodgson's Tears wrote:'genius' why exactly?

I think a better person to ask is Jumper's rapper friend. As an older American white guy, I catch some of the obvious stuff, but there are layers to this. Here's what the Atlantic wrote about it:

"The music itself is more art collage than song, its tunefulness a means rather than an end. Over a bustle of merry chants, foreboding bass, and James Brown yowls, Glover paraphrases the mode of popular hip-hop. Trending rappers drop by with their signature adlibs—“skrrt, skrrt” goes Slim Jxmmi (Sloop note: Glover also namechecks rapper Kodak Black)—and Glover strings together keywords: party, money, cops. The video clarifies the semi-satirical meaning here. Glover and a troupe of school kids perform choreography derived from viral videos and historical images of black performance, and Hiro Murai’s camera follows them often at an unnervingly indifferent midrange distance (Murai is one of Glover’s chief collaborators on Atlanta). A frenzy of pursuits, riots, and shootings unfolds in the margins. The song and dance routine is partly a respite from, and partly an accompaniment to, the chaos.


In this, Glover certainly isn’t the first artist to suggest that black popular entertainment can simultaneously work as minstrelsy, appeasing a racist system, and as a gas valve of joy for people crunched by that system. Nor is he the first to describe the psychic tax of this state of affairs, seen both when Glover’s character wearily lights a joint and when, in some other space that may well signify his subconscious, he runs in terror from a white mob. But Murai’s eye and staging and Glover’s performance are together so stylish and surreal that the message is made newly raw. Jarring use of empty space, contrast, and timing keep every frame stark and alive."

But there's also other stuff in there. Glover gunning down the choir recalls the Charleston church shooting by Dylan Roof.

The Modernist wrote:

sloopjohnc wrote:

Hodgson's Tears wrote:'genius' why exactly?

I think a better person to ask is Jumper's rapper friend. As an older American white guy, I catch some of the obvious stuff, but there are layers to this. Here's what the Atlantic wrote about it:

"The music itself is more art collage than song, its tunefulness a means rather than an end. Over a bustle of merry chants, foreboding bass, and James Brown yowls, Glover paraphrases the mode of popular hip-hop. Trending rappers drop by with their signature adlibs—“skrrt, skrrt” goes Slim Jxmmi (Sloop note: Glover also namechecks rapper Kodak Black)—and Glover strings together keywords: party, money, cops. The video clarifies the semi-satirical meaning here. Glover and a troupe of school kids perform choreography derived from viral videos and historical images of black performance, and Hiro Murai’s camera follows them often at an unnervingly indifferent midrange distance (Murai is one of Glover’s chief collaborators on Atlanta). A frenzy of pursuits, riots, and shootings unfolds in the margins. The song and dance routine is partly a respite from, and partly an accompaniment to, the chaos.


In this, Glover certainly isn’t the first artist to suggest that black popular entertainment can simultaneously work as minstrelsy, appeasing a racist system, and as a gas valve of joy for people crunched by that system. Nor is he the first to describe the psychic tax of this state of affairs, seen both when Glover’s character wearily lights a joint and when, in some other space that may well signify his subconscious, he runs in terror from a white mob. But Murai’s eye and staging and Glover’s performance are together so stylish and surreal that the message is made newly raw. Jarring use of empty space, contrast, and timing keep every frame stark and alive."

But there's also other stuff in there. Glover gunning down the choir recalls the Charleston church shooting by Dylan Roof.

I'm sorry but all the gushing above does nothing to explain to me why it should be seen as genius. Musically this is very ordinary. Don't believe the hype.

The Modernist wrote:

sloopjohnc wrote:

Hodgson's Tears wrote:'genius' why exactly?

I think a better person to ask is Jumper's rapper friend. As an older American white guy, I catch some of the obvious stuff, but there are layers to this. Here's what the Atlantic wrote about it:

"The music itself is more art collage than song, its tunefulness a means rather than an end. Over a bustle of merry chants, foreboding bass, and James Brown yowls, Glover paraphrases the mode of popular hip-hop. Trending rappers drop by with their signature adlibs—“skrrt, skrrt” goes Slim Jxmmi (Sloop note: Glover also namechecks rapper Kodak Black)—and Glover strings together keywords: party, money, cops. The video clarifies the semi-satirical meaning here. Glover and a troupe of school kids perform choreography derived from viral videos and historical images of black performance, and Hiro Murai’s camera follows them often at an unnervingly indifferent midrange distance (Murai is one of Glover’s chief collaborators on Atlanta). A frenzy of pursuits, riots, and shootings unfolds in the margins. The song and dance routine is partly a respite from, and partly an accompaniment to, the chaos.


In this, Glover certainly isn’t the first artist to suggest that black popular entertainment can simultaneously work as minstrelsy, appeasing a racist system, and as a gas valve of joy for people crunched by that system. Nor is he the first to describe the psychic tax of this state of affairs, seen both when Glover’s character wearily lights a joint and when, in some other space that may well signify his subconscious, he runs in terror from a white mob. But Murai’s eye and staging and Glover’s performance are together so stylish and surreal that the message is made newly raw. Jarring use of empty space, contrast, and timing keep every frame stark and alive."

But there's also other stuff in there. Glover gunning down the choir recalls the Charleston church shooting by Dylan Roof.

I'm sorry but all the gushing above does nothing to explain to me why it should be seen as genius. Musically this is very ordinary. Don't believe the hype.

sloopjohnc wrote:

Hodgson's Tears wrote:'genius' why exactly?

I think a better person to ask is Jumper's rapper friend.

Nikki Gradual wrote:It left me speechless. I was mesmerised from the start and didn't move for a good 10 seconds after it finished.
Stunning.
Except that, if you take the video away, it is pretty much total shit.
In the good olden days people wrote songs knowing that it had to be so catchy that it would get on TOTP and then so good lyrically that it would still get their message/meaning across even after going through the wringer of being "interpreted" by Ruby Flipper.
Now the film is more important than the song in telling the story.
Sorry if someone has previously made all these points. I haven't read it. This is the UK. Yeah!