Black Lives Matter: the Music and the Message
Kendrick Lamar live at Les Ardentes, 2015, photography by Kmeron on Flickr
Track by track, Kieran Lewis explores the daily injustices expressed through Black music.
“The gift that keeps on giving”- that’s how Dr Todd Boyd (AKA “The Notorious Ph.D.”) defines the contributions of enslaved West Africans and their descendants to the music of the United States and beyond. Dr Boyd is a pioneering scholar of hip-hop culture at the University of Southern California, and he thinks it’s about time we all knew the importance of music as an expression of the Black experience. Black music, after all, came to the United States before they were united or states, arriving on the first ships from Africa. The same is true of Europe, where the depictions of Black musicians were popping up at royal courts as long ago as the Middle Ages. Scroll a couple of thousand years down the historical timeline to the early 60s, and the Windrush generation was gearing up to stage the first Notting Hill Carnival, just as Nina Simone was recording “Mississippi Goddam”, her “first civil rights song”, across the pond.
As a vehicle for expressing the reality of being Black anywhere in the Western world, music has taken centre stage in the fight against oppression ever since the first uprisings of enslaved people. It makes sense, then, that Black musicians who choose to tackle the Black experience in their work have a lot to teach anyone with the privilege of learning about racism rather than experiencing it first-hand. While White people can never expect to fully understand this reality, there is no shortage of music to help us out as we try to. The following list of ten, post-1960s Civil Rights Movement songs is a small selection that might be a good place to start.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
“You’ll grow in the ghetto living second-rate/And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate”
“The Message” was not the first song to address the social inequality faced by Black communities all over the US, but it remains one of the most applauded raps to have done so. Listening beyond what is one of the most sampled beats of all time, we hear a message that continues to resonate. The song’s fifth verse, written by Melle Mel of the Furious Five, dives headfirst into the harsh reality facing a Black child in the Bronx. Born with “no state of mind” but destined to fall victim to the school-to-prison pipeline, Mel’s protagonist ends the song “found dead in a cell”. Only the seventh rap song to make it onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart, “The Message” was also named “most powerful pop single of 1982” by the New York Times and, twenty years later, added to the archives of the US Library of Congress.
Public Enemy
“I’m ready and hyped, plus I’m amped/Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps”
Chuck D of Public Enemy remembers Spike Lee asking him for “an anthem” to accompany his 1989 film “Do The Right Thing”. Thirty years later, it’s damn near impossible to argue that he got anything less. Perhaps Public Enemy’s best-known song, “Fight the Power” draws on Frederick Douglass for lyrical inspiration. The Long Island group hammers home the celebrated abolitionist’s message, “There is no progress without struggle,” with a wake-up call to anyone oblivious to deep-rooted double standards and racial bias in the United States. The track becomes especially poignant when we remember that it came out just as the “Central Park five” were being indicted. Their case, and their exoneration years later, would become an infamous example of institutional racism in the US justice system.
2pac
“I guess ‘cause I’m Black born/I’m supposed to say ‘peace’, sing songs and get capped on”
Whether you believe he died that night in Las Vegas or that he’s hanging out in Cuba with Elvis and JFK, we can all agree that Tupac Shakur’s musical legacy leaves no such room for debate. “Holler If Ya Hear Me”, the lead single from his second studio album – much like the previous two songs on this list – is an appeal for empathy, solidarity and awareness in the face of systemic discrimination against young Black men in particular. His anger in the face of injustice is palpable here, but so is his optimistic defiance and refusal to accept the status quo. Sampling Public Enemy’s “Rebel Without Pause”, Tupac claims his place among their successors in the world of socially-conscious rap.
Esperanza Spalding
“Baby no one else will tell you so remember that/You are Black Gold”
“Black Gold” is a joyful letter of encouragement to Black children everywhere, not just lyrically, but musically as well. “Hold your head as high as you can/High enough to see who you are, little man,” sings bassist-vocalist-composer Esperanza Spalding. Acapella and ethereal, the intro is a lullaby before her voice is joined by a bold jazz bassline, punctuated by trumpet blasts. Spalding is a classically-trained multi-instrumentalist, often choosing to play a six-string jazz bass during live shows; perhaps her most memorable being the 2009 Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo, where she played at the invitation of President Barack Obama.
Kendrick Lamar
“And we hate po-po/Wanna kill us dead in the streets fo’ sho’”
Since the start of its evolution as an underground New York City movement in the 1970s, hip-hop has spent decades moving towards the position that it occupies today, at the centre of pop culture. I think anyone would struggle to find a better visual representation of that progression than Kendrick Lamar on top of a police car during a high-profile, televised awards ceremony proclaiming, “N***a, we gon’ be alright”. This was what the world saw at the 2015 BET Awards. A hopeful moment that, nevertheless, makes no secret of the Compton rapper’s pain, Alright begins with the lyric “Alls my life I had to fight,” a nod to Oprah Winfrey’s line in the film adaptation of “The Color Purple”. As it reaches its crescendo, Pharrell Williams and Thundercat are on hand to help convey a message that has been chanted on the streets of more mourning cities than many police departments would care to admit.
Open Mike Eagle
“Today I saw a lady say ‘hi’ to a stranger/Then avoid my eyes like I’m a White-person strangler”
– Smiling (Quirky Race Doc), 2016
Chicago-born, LA-based rapper Open Mike Eagle has always been able to wrap up painful truths and observations in cerebral humour. He trades in the kind of dark comedy (he even has a 2014 album entitled just that) that has just as much chance of making you cry as it does of making you laugh, especially when he zeros in on the realities of racism. This track from the 2016 project, Hella Personal Film Festival, lets us into Mike’s head as he strolls around anonymously before a show. When he’s not up on the stage, safe in his designated role as entertainer, he finds himself having to search for the even the most basic acknowledgement of his humanity. Mike comes to the depressing conclusion that “nobody smiles at me ‘cause I’m a Black man”.
Solange
“Don’t touch my hair/When it’s the feelings I wear”
Black hair has been politicised in the Western world ever since the first Africans were captured and sold into slavery. After emancipation, the situation arguably became even more difficult as Black people struggled to navigate fashion and beauty standards that often stood between them and social mobility. On “Don’t Touch My Hair”, Solange celebrates her hair as a marker of difference, but not a source of shame. Black hair is finally presented as a powerful symbol of Black history, resilience and autonomy, the significance of which only its owners can truly understand. “Don’t touch my pride,” she warns anyone tempted to reach for her natural curls, “The glory’s all mine”.
Little Simz
“Just another Black boy in the system doing time in bin (True)/But he had a heart of gold, good intent with a smile so big”
Having put out three critically acclaimed albums by the age of 25, Islington-born rapper Little Simz is as prolific as her lyrics are perceptive. She uses her effortless, self-assured flow to proudly champion Black female talent. Starting with freestyles at her local youth club when she was just nine years old, Little Simz’s career has taken her around the world, both by herself and with collaborators, Gorillaz. While her international reputation may be growing, however, she has never minced her words when it comes to speaking out against injustice at home. On this track from her 2019 release, “GREY Area”, Simz calls out the legal system for failing to support the communities that are affected the most by its policies.
Dave
“But most importantly, to show how deep all this pain goes/West Africa, Benin, they called it Slave Coast”
On February 18, Dave did what British history textbooks have failed to do for generations. Not in a classroom, but at the BRIT Awards ceremony – where he would pick up Best Album for “Psychodrama” – the 20-year-old London rapper reminded a nation of its dark colonial past. He told a TV audience of 3.8 million, “Black is naming your countries on what they trade most/Coast of Ivory, Gold Coast and the Grain Coast”. This lead single is far more than a history lesson though. In the space of three minutes and forty-nine seconds, Dave attempts to express the pain, pride, history, diversity and contradictions contained in the word “Black”. While this is a reality that much of the country will never truly understand, the BRIT Award-winner delivers his message with such skill and intensity that it is impossible not to stop and reflect on it.
Run The Jewels
“Pedophiles sponsor all these f***ing racist b*****ds (They do)”
– JU$T (feat. Pharrell Williams and Zach de la Rocha), 2020
Run the Jewels are not messing about. Not that they ever were, but this time the gloves are well and truly off. “RTJ4” dropped on 3 June, eight days after George Floyd’s murder, against a backdrop of mass-civil disobedience and a president hiding in his basement after pouring oil on the fire. Atlanta rapper Killer Mike, the duo’s main vocalist, is not only a political rapper, but an activist in his own right. He has campaigned locally and nationwide for social justice, both independently and as part of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns since 2015. On what is arguably the album’s hardest-hitting track, “JU$T”, Mike hits back at institutional racism with more firepower than a militarised police department. The refrain “Look at all these slave masters posing on your dollar” feels tailor-made for the protests of the past few weeks, but the album was penned well before the world knew George Floyd’s name.
If there’s one thing we can take away from this short list of songs, it’s that not one of the problems they address is new. As different as they may be from one another, they are bound together by a long tradition of Black musicians confronting daily injustice through music. After centuries spent denying the inherent value of a huge demographic group, White people are still being told – recently, more frankly than ever – what should never have been questioned. “We affirm our humanity,” announces the official website of the Black Lives Matter movement. As nauseating as it is that this is even necessary, it is now more important than ever. Black musicians have been affirming their humanity through their art for as long as they have been creating it. All we really had to do was listen.
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