From Zion- Great Song and Cover Performances: There are some songs that you don’t truly appreciate until another artist takes it on and makes it their own. Oftentimes the newer version draws out the original’s complexities in a way you never would have noticed before. Or maybe the first version is equally compelling, but the cover artist re imagined it with such grandeur .
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Showing posts with label Cameos from Zion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cameos from Zion. Show all posts
SONGWRITERS Alfred Hayes (words) and Earl Robinson (music)
PERFORMERS Joan Baez, Paul Robeson, others
APPEARS ON From Every Stage, Woodstock: Music From The Original Soundtrack and More (Baez); Live at Carnegie Hall (Robeson)
Although popularized by Joan Baez' performance in the 1970 film Woodstock, this labor ballad traces its pedigree back to a 1930 poem by the British writer Alfred Hayes called "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night." (Some accounts have Hayes writing the poem in 1925.) In 1936, Seattle composer Earl Robinson set the poem to music; since then, various artists have performed the song as an inspiration for organizing labor and other community movements. In addition to Baez, singers of Joe Hill include Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs. In 1958, Robeson performed what must have been the definitive version for an earlier generation at his Carnegie Hall concert. "Joe Hill" remains a staple of Baez' concerts to this day.
The song's unlikely subject was born Joel Emmanuel Hagglund in Sweden sometime between 1879 and 1882. Hagglun emigrated to the United States in 1902 and began traveling the American west as a migrant laborer. Somewhere along the line, Hagglund became known as Joseph Hillstrom, a name perhaps inevitably shortened to Joe Hill. Hill joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the "Wobblies") in 1910, gaining prominence as an organizer and writer of labor songs.
In early 1914, Hill arrived in Park City, Utah, having found work there as a silver miner. Shortly after Hill's arrival in Park City, masked robbers murdered a Salt Lake City butcher and his son in the family shop. During the robbery, the butcher returned fire and wounded one of the robbers. Shortly after, Hill appeared in at local doctor's office with a bullet wound. Although he denied robbing the butcher -- and rudimentary forensic evidence supported his claim -- Hill was nonetheless arrested and tried for murder. Hill's efforts to keep the IWW out of his trial failed, and it is thought today that his membership in the radical labor organization was the key factor in the guilty verdict brought against him. A Utah firing squad executed Hill on November 19, 1915. (Complete Wikipedia article here.)
Shortly before his death, Hill sent the following message to IWW leader Bill Haywood:
Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize... Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don't want to be found dead in Utah.
"Joe Hill" has been performed around the world in over a dozen languages. Of the two versions presented here, Baez' version shows "Joe Hill" in its folk roots and -- through Robeson's more classically oriented rendition -- the extent to which the song has been adapted. Earl Robinson had this to say about "Joe Hill":
"Joe Hill" was written in Camp Unity in the summer of 1936 in New York State, for a campfire program celebrating him and his songs, "Casey Jones," "Pie in the Sky" and others. Before the end of that summer we were hearing of performances in a New Orleans Labor Council, a San Francisco picket line, and it was taken to Spain by the members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to help in the fight against Franco. It has travelled around the world since like a folk song, been translated into twelve or fifteen languages. Joan Baez' singing of the song at Woodstock brought it to popular attention, but I still get asked the question, "Did you write 'Joe Hill'?" [More here and here.]
LYRICS I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me. Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead" "I never died" said he, "I never died" said he.
"The Copper Bosses killed you Joe, they shot you Joe" says I. "Takes more than guns to kill a man" Says Joe "I didn't die" Says Joe "I didn't die"
"In Salt Lake City, Joe," says I, Him standing by my bed, "They framed you on a murder charge," Says Joe, "But I ain't dead," Says Joe, "But I ain't dead."
And standing there as big as life and smiling with his eyes. Says Joe "What they can never kill went on to organize, went on to organize"
From San Diego up to Maine, in every mine and mill, Where working men defend their rights, it's there you find Joe Hill, it's there you find Joe Hill!
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me. Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead" "I never died" said he, "I never died" said he.
Joan Baez Performs Thrilling 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' at Rock Hall of Fame
Baez also revisited songs from The Band, Woody Guthrie with Mary Chapin Carpenter, Indigo Girls
Joan Baez played with Mary Chapin Carpenter and the Indigo Girls at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Kevin Mazur/WireImage/Getty
Joan Baez delivered spare, captivating versions of three songs from her repertoire on Friday night at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at Brooklyn's Barclays Center.
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Baez initially took the stage alone to perform a rendition of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," a traditional number that she also performed at Woodstock in 1969. "My voice is my greatest gift," Baez said during her induction speech, and the solo format allowed her to demonstrate that gift's extraordinary range.
She played a bare outline of melody on guitar, but the focus was entirely on her singing: she transformed single words like "home" and "chariot" into multi-note, virtuosic displays. She also adjusted the song's lyrics in the final line – "Coming for to carry me home" – to include President Trump, suggesting that even he was not beyond saving.
After "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," Baez invited singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter and the Indigo Girls to join her onstage. Together, the quartet tackled "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)," a protest tune written by Woody Guthrie, and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," one of the Band's most popular songs.
"Deportee" was a serene affair, full of dulcet strums and graceful singing from all four artists. Baez picked up the tempo during "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and enjoyed slipping in front of the beat and waiting for it catch up. A few members of the crowd joined in during the song's famous, hummable chorus.
Baez initially expressed surprise when she found out about her Rock Hall induction. "I never considered myself to be a rock and roll artist," she explained in a statement. "But as part of the folk music boom which contributed to and influenced the rock revolution of the Sixties, I am proud that some of the songs I sang made their way into the rock lexicon. I very much appreciate this honor and acknowledgement by the Hall of Fame."
Early in her career, Baez recorded traditional songs like "House of the Rising Sun," which later became a major hit for The Animals, and "John Riley," which subsequently influenced the Byrds' rendition on 1966's Fifth Dimension. Baez also performed at Woodstock, one of rock's seminal events.
Even if her music leans more towards folk, longtime friend Bob Neuwirth suggested that Baez's spirit makes her a natural candidate for the Rock Hall. "Joan has that rock and roll attitude toward life and freedom and love," Neuwirth said recently. "She has a kind of bravery that could just kick down the doors."
Baez's Hall of Fame induction is the latest acknowledgement of her contributions to popular music. She earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys in 2007.
She is currently at work on a new album produced by Joe Henry. "So many people have said to me, out of the blue, 'We need Joan Baez right now,'" Henry told Rolling Stone. "She's been fiercely standing where she is her whole life."
Shosholoza (Shosholoza) Kulezo ntaba Stimela Sipum'e South Africa (2x)
Wen' Uyabaleka (Wen' Uyabaleka) Ku Lezontaba Stimela Sipum'e South Africa (2x) Shosholoza (Shosholoza) Ku Lezontaba Stimela Sipum'e South Africa (2x)
Shosholoza Mama Dig Dig Digging In The Sun hia hia ho Men Must Work For Me Shosholoza (x4)
Dum, dum ha dum dum ha dum dum ha dum (Shosholoza) (x2)
Shosholoza (Shosholoza) Ku Lezontaba Stimela Sipum'e South Africa (2x)
Wen' Uyabaleka (Wen' Uyabaleka) Ku Lezontaba Stimela Sipum'e South Africa (2x)
"Shosholoza" is aNdebelefolk songthat originated in what is nowZimbabwebut was popularised in South Africa. The song is a traditional South Africanfolk songthat was sung by Ndebele all-male migrant workers that were working in the South African mines in acall and responsestyle. The song is so popular in South African culture that it is often referred to as South Africa's second national anthem.
History
Although the original author of the song is unknown, "Shosholoza" is a traditional miner's song, originally sung by groups of men from the Ndebele ethnic group that travelled by steam train from their homes in Zimbabwe to work in South Africa's diamond and gold mines. The Ndebele live predominantly in Zimbabwe (formerly, Rhodesia) near its border with South Africa, and they can also be found in the northern border of South Africa.[1] The song mixes Ndebele and Zulu words and is Zimbabwean in origin even though the two ethnic groups are very similar.
Some people argue that the song describes the journey to the mines in South Africa, while others say it describes the return to Zimbabwe.It is also sometimes sung "stimela si phume Rhodesia". According to cultural researchers Booth and Nauright, Zulu workers later took up the song to generate rhythm during group tasks and to alleviate boredom and stress. The song was sung by working miners in time with the rhythm of swinging their axes to dig. It was usually sung under hardship in call and response style (one man singing a solo line and the rest of the group responding by copying him). It was also sung by prisoners in call and response style using alto, soprano part divided by row. The late former South African President Nelson Mandela described how he sang Shosholoza as he worked during his imprisonment on Robben Island. He described it as "a song that compares the apartheid struggle to the motion of an oncoming train" and went on to explain that "the singing made the work lighter".
In contemporary times, it is used in varied contexts in South Africa to show solidarity in sporting events and other national events to relay the message that the players are not alone and are part of a team.
Climate activists made the song the centrepiece of their Occupy COP17 rally on 9 December 2011, the final day of the United Nations climate treaty negotiations. Activists were calling on negotiators to "Stand With Africa" and agree to a legally binding and effective treaty.
Meaning
The song was usually sung to express the hardship of working in the mines. It expresses heartache over the hard work performed in the mines. The word Shosholoza or "chocholoza!" means go forward or make way for the next man, in Ndebele It is used as a term of encouragement and hope for the workers as a sign of solidarity. The sound "sho sho" uses onomatopoeia and reminiscent of the sound made by the steam train (stimela). Stimela is the Zulu word for steam train. "Kulezo ntaba!" means (At those far away mountains), "Stimela Siphume eZimbabwe" (the train come from Zimbabwe), "Wen' uya baleka" (Because you're running away/hurrying). In contemporary times, its meaning is to show support for any struggle.
Pop culture references
The song is also used in pop culture to convey messages of hope and solidarity for athletes during competitions or in other times of hardship and distress.
The song gained further popularity after South Africa won the 1995 Rugby World Cup, and is a favourite at sport events in South Africa. It was sung by the then Talk Radio 702 Breakfast Show co-host, Dan Moyane. The song was recorded, mastered and released in five days, having been mastered in the UK to get it ready in time for the first game in the 1995 RWC. It was conceptualised and produced by Famous Faces Management's CFF Stuart Lee. The record went gold in sales terms.
The song was also sung by the South African football team as they came onto the field of play to open the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Other references
The first African challengers for the America's Cup, Team Shosholoza, took their name from the song; as did the Shosholoza Meyl, a long-distance passenger train service operating in South Africa. The song is also used as a campfire song by scouts in South Africa
Lyrics
The lyrics of the song vary, as do the transcriptions. In the older traditional styles, the words translate to "train from Rhodesia". Such is the version heard in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy and as sung by Pete Seeger in his album We Shall Overcome. Here is one example:
early on monday morning
police arrest my brother
for working for a black
community
monday afternoon
went to see my brother
police man treated me
like a donkey
i say to police man
you've got a bad attitude
oh no
am no crimnal
am a good black woman
i say to police man
you've got a bad attitude
oh mama
am no crimanl
am a good black woman
hmmm...
oh gboshi mamama
egutan ga lu to
oh mama
oh mama yo mama
oh yele leye ye mama
oh mama oh mama
early on monday morning
police arrest my brother
for working for a black community
monday afternoon
went to see my brother
oh mama
police man treated me
like a donkey
eziganezetu tula mama Brenda Fassie Iconic but erratic singer who was South Africa's first black pop star
Brenda Fassie died on 9 May 2004 after been found in a coma from a drug overdose . She was South Africa's first black pop star, selling millions of albums during a two-decade career. Recent pilgrims to her hospital bedside, while she was in a coma, included Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela, a measure of her importance to her country.
However, dying as she lived, Fassie was pursued to her grave by controversy. Local media have been full of reports of squabbles between her lover, gospel singer Gloria Chaka, and her family; between her manager Peter Snyman and her producer Chicco Twala; and speculation that the coma which preceded her death was induced not by an asthma attack, as her family claimed, but by yet another drug incident.
Fassie was the youngest of nine children, born into a desperately poor family in the Cape Town township of Langa. Her father died when she was two, and her mother, a cleaner, recognised her daughter's talent early on.
By the age of four, Brenda, named after the US country singer Brenda Lee, was performing at church events, accompanied by her mother on the piano. At the age of 16, she left for Soweto to seek her fortune as a singer, first with the local vocal trio Joy, and later fronting the township pop group Brenda And The Big Dudes.
In 1983, she released her debut recording, Weekend Special, a lament about a boyfriend who would see her only at weekends. It was an instant hit, eventually taking the group to the US, Brazil, Europe and Australia, and was rapidly followed by several more hits, including It's Nice To Be With People and No No No, Senor.
Revelling in her new-found fame, Fassie lavished money on cars, houses and extravagant parties. She had a son, Bongani, by a fellow Big Dudes musician; a 1989 marriage to a businessman was annulled a year later.
This disappointment appeared to derail Fassie. She became addicted to hard drugs and her career suffered. She fired managers, was sued by promoters for failing to turn up at concerts, and, in 1992, was fined for assaulting a photo-journalist. She got into financial difficulties and lost her house. Bongani was expelled from school because his mother did not pay the fees.
In 1994, the year of South Africa's first democratic elections, Fassie unsuccessfully attempted a comeback with Abantu Bayakhuluma (The People Speak), after which she sank into cocaine addiction, renting a room in a sleazy Johannesburg hotel with her female lover, Poppy Sihlahla. Only after Sihlahla died of an overdose did Fassie pull herself together and go into rehab.
Shortly afterwards, she released Memeza, with its hit single Vulindlela. It became South Africa's biggest-selling album in 1998, and was followed by an album a year for the next four years. The money rolled in again, and Fassie resumed her lavish lifestyle.
A talented musician, her genius lay in her ability to reinvent herself, and give voice to the frustrations and aspirations of the township. She started off as a pop queen but, politicised by growing up in Langa at a time of tremendous upheaval - the 1976 student uprisings had deeply affected her school - she easily tapped into the political militancy of the 1980s.
In 1990, she released the single Black President, a tribute to the still imprisoned Nelson Mandela, which was banned by the apartheid regime. She stopped singing in English, declaring: "I am proud to be an African." All her subsequent songs were in Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho. When kwaito, the first authentically African sound in decades, emerged from Soweto street parties in the early 1990s, Fassie adopted the genre as her own.
She also inspired by example. When she confessed to drug and drink addiction, other prominent musicians went public about theirs. When she took her first lesbian lover, other black celebrities came out of the closet. She is survived by her son.
· Brenda Fassie, pop singer, born November 3 1964; died May 9 2004
Bruce Springsteen Calls Donald Trump a 'Moron'"The republic is under siege by a moron," Springsteen says in excerpts from upcoming Rolling Stone feature. "It's a Tragedy for our Democracy"
Bruce Springsteen on Donald Trump: "The republic is under siege by a moron." Credit: Ida Mae Astute/ABC/Getty, Roberto Panucci/Corbis/Getty
Bruce Springsteen spent the summer playing stadiums with the E Street Band and preparing to release his autobiography, Born To Run, while largely staying clear of this year's presidential campaigns. In an excerpt from an extensive interview that will appear in the next issue of Rolling Stone, Springsteen shares his thoughts on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, while addressing his own absence from the trail. What do you make of the Trump phenomenon?Well, you know, the republic is under siege by a moron, basically. The whole thing is tragic. Without overstating it, it's a tragedy for our democracy. When you start talking about elections being rigged, you're pushing people beyond democratic governance. And it's a very, very dangerous thing to do. Once you let those genies out of the bottle, they don't go back in so easy, if they go back in at all. The ideas he's moving to the mainstream are all very dangerous ideas – white nationalism and the alt-right movement. The outrageous things that he's done – not immediately disavowing David Duke? These are things that are obviously beyond the pale for any previous political candidate. It would sink your candidacy immediately. I believe that there's a price being paid for not addressing the real cost of the deindustrialization and globalization that has occurred in the United States for the past 35, 40 years and how it’s deeply affected people's lives and deeply hurt people to where they want someone who says they have a solution. And Trump's thing is simple answers to very complex problems. Fallacious answers to very complex problems. And that can be very appealing. You haven't chosen to do anything with the campaign this year. Have you lost faith in whatever power you might have to affect these things?I don't know. I think you have a limited amount of impact as an entertainer, performer or musician. I feel what I’ve done was certainly worth doing. And I did it at the time because I felt the country was in crisis, which it certainly is right now. I don’t know if we’ve been approached or not to do anything at the moment. If so, I would take it into consideration and see where it goes. No, I haven't really lost faith in what I consider to be the small amount of impact that somebody in rock music might be able to have. I don't think people go to musicians for their political points of view. I think your political point of view is circumstances and then how you were nurtured and brought up. But it's worth giving a shot when it's the only thing you have. Is there a lack of enthusiasm for Hillary on your own part?No. I like Hillary. I think she would be a very, very good president.
Photo collage Shadrach From left to right: Action Bronson, Lil’ Dicky, Drake, Mac Miller (Images: Wikipedia, Facebook, Shutterstock)
Any Jewish rapper working today owes an enormous debt to Def Jam Records founder Rick Rubin and the troublemakers he released upon the world—Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad Rock” Horovitz, and Adam “MCA” Yauch. From the dayLicensed to Ill (1986) dropped, the Beastie Boys—that rollicking, nasally, raunchy trio of New York Jews—has been unapologetically themselves, in all their irreverent glory.
Rubin and the Beastie Boys created a space for themselves in popular music that hadn’t existed in a meaningful way since before World War II: a space for Jews to coexist with black music, while also distinguishing themselves from “whites.” The Beasties meant to offend, meant to subvert assumptions—and their way of achieving that (besides giant inflatable penises on stage) was to not only behave in a manner oh-so-unbecoming of well-to-do New York Jews, but to create some of the most enduring rap albums of the era while paying proper homage to the African-American artists who created the genre in which they worked. Their 1988 album Paul’s Boutique remains one of the greatest rap albums ever made, and essentially set the stage for the sample-heavy magpie sensibility that has ruled the genre off and on ever since.
The Beasties expressed their own sense of their musical place on “Shadrach,” one of the tracks on the seminal Paul’s Boutique. The title comes from a story in the Book of Daniel, which goes as such: King Nebuchadnezzar, perhaps a little bored, commissioned a golden image to be constructed in a local plain. All Babylonian officials were required to bow down before the image, and all who failed to comply would come to a fiery end. Word got to Nebuchadnezzar that a trio of rogue Jews (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) had refused to take a knee, and Nebuchadnezzar called the three before him. Aware of the punishment that loomed, the boys told Nebuchadnezzar that God would be with them. They were thrown into a fiery furnace, but rather than burn to a crisp, they stood in the fire, a fourth figure apparently visible alongside them. Nebuchadnezzar ordered them out of the fire, whence they emerged unharmed. The king declared that any who spoke against the God of these Jews would suffer a fate worse than death.
The self-mythologizing of “Shadrach” by a trio of rabble-rousing Jews is unmistakable. The three rappers were thrown into the fire of moral judgment (presumably, Rick Rubin was the mysterious fourth man), refusing to conform to the dominant social mores of white Christian America. But instead of accepting a promotion from their captors, they flip ’em off and chant their strange names at the top of their lungs for the chorus, “Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego!” (The use of this biblical story throughout the history of black American music is well-documented: Louis Armstrong and Sly and the Family Stone, among others, wrote “Shadrach” songs.)
Though the Beasties were rarely so explicit about the politics of musical identity in their lyrics, they were blatantly Jewish, from their nasally delivery to their penchant for performing in Orthodox Jewish garb. Judaism wasn’t always a part of their actual lyrics, but it was the defining characteristic of who they were: They were New York Jewish kids, and they flaunted it, even after they moved to L.A.
So, how do today’s Jewish rappers stack up against the Beastie Boys? For your listening pleasure, here are the four most prominent Jews in rap* today, with an exploration of which flavor of Jewish they are and how they walk the walk and talk the talk. Headphones recommended.
Action Bronson
Bronsolino was raised Muslim, but since his first mixtape, Bon Appetit … Bitch(2011), the Flushing rapper has always peppered his rhymes with Jewish references (though according to Bronson: “Anything that has to do with pig, I’m eating”). Born to a Jewish “free-spirit hippie” mother (his words) and an Albanian immigrant, Arian Aslani, aka Action Bronson, is a mountain of a man who sports a frizzy red beard that makes his head seem even larger than it is, and at around 300 pounds, he’s got the type of heft that gives him an almost regal bearing; to watch him sample haute cuisine in his Vice eating series, Fuck, That’s Delicious, is what I imagine watching William Taft eat must’ve looked like.
The “haute” part matters deeply to Bronson. Directionless and otherwise engaged in petty crime in his 20s, he decided to attend culinary school, where—well, here he is in a 2013 interview:
“That school was where everything popped off,” he says. “I met the mother of my children there. Fucked her in the locker room. And then we went back, and I think we made filet mignon that day.”
He spent a few years in New York as a chef, and today, Fuck, That’s Deliciousepisodes see Bronson traveling all over the world with his entourage (usually another rapper named Big Body Bes) and ordering one of everything in restaurants where you typically don’t see 300-pound tatted-up Albanian-Jewish hybrids rolling through, reeking of weed.
As a rapper, the love of fine food is the basis of his persona. It’s reminiscent of MF DOOM’s Mm…Food (2004) in that consumption and the way in which we choose what we put into our bodies defines us, the difference being that DOOM was talking about a spiritual hunger, whereas Bronson seems, like, legitimately famished. But still, he insists on the best. Here he is on “Twin Peugeots,” from Blue Chips 2 (2013):
My dad was right when he said I was a strange, fuck Now every meal is calamari and boudin blanc … Eggs Rothko The handmade suit cloth I got the sports coat
And lest you think Bronson’s songs are nothing but a laundry list of expensive foods and quick reviews of five-star New York restaurants, rest assured that he also douses every song in references to obscure New York athletes from the 1980s and ’90s (Randy Velarde, Marty Janetty, and Clarence Weatherspoon, to name a few). Gifted with a distinctly New York flow (he’s been accused of imitating Ghostface Killah in the past, a charge that has some merit), Bronson can comfortably snap from a pleasant sing-song cadence to a rapid-fire delivery. It helps, of course, to work with producers who use outside-the-box samples for an outside-the-box rapper; at various points, frequent collaborator and Brooklyn producer Party Supplies has thrown in samples from Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman, and Turkish rock bandMazhar-Fuat-Özkan.
Bronson makes party music you can listen to anytime, a guy who’s having (admittedly misogynistic, materialistic) fun and just wants to tell you about it. Blue Chips (2012) and its successor are prime examples of a kind of joyous raucousness that’s tough to fake, and his latest album, Mr. Wonderful (2015), for all its faults, is in that same vein. He’s a throwback in that way, as a lot of New York rappers are: Throw on a beat, and the bars will come. It’s refreshingly unpretentious, even if the cover of Saaab Stories(2013) rightfully makes you queasy.
Jewishly speaking, that part of his identity is more punchline fodder than anything. Songs like “Steve Wynn,” “Falconry,” and “Morey Boogie Boards” are chock-full of lines like this:
So wake up early, hop off the shitter Employ a lawyer that’s been bar mitzvahed Never trust goyim, see me sippin’ spritzer Hookers with Spitzer
Bronson is a man of multitudes; like Milo Yiannopoulus, he seems to be Jewish when it’s convenient for him, just as he’s Albanian when it’s convenient, Muslim when it’s convenient, and so on. Issues of identity aren’t terribly central to his act. He’s an original American hybrid.
Mac Miller
“My name Mac Miller/Who the fuck are you?”
The Pittsburgh-born rapper and self-described “bad little Jew” doesn’t mince words and, like Bronson, he’s spent a good chunk of his career pigeonholed as a college-radio rapper. Unlike Bronson, Miller seems to have designs on something beyond that disdainful label, and if his last album, GO:OD AM (2015), is any indication, he’s well on his way.
Miller was born Malcolm McCormick, the son of a Jewish mother and a Christian father. He was raised Jewish, had a bar mitzvah and, according to Miller, his favorite holiday food is his grandmother’s noodle kugel, which he lovingly describes as “fuckin’ awesome.” Scrawny, tatted up, and often clad in some sort of Pittsburgh sports attire, Miller’s been releasing music since he was in high school. At 24, his rise from indie king to major-label signee has been nothing short of meteoric.
Miller’s early high school mixtapes featured the rapper using the embarrassingly cheesy moniker Easy Mac, so for his sake and ours, we can skip over his (literally) sophomoric attempts. During his senior year of high school, Miller signed with the Pittsburgh-based indie label Rostrum Records, joining Wiz Khalifa, who’d rise to prominence right along with Miller. With mixtapes like K.I.D.S. (2010) and Best Day Ever (2011), Miller began to make a name for himself as a hyperactive braggart with an affinity for weed and the Steelers (he’s certainly the only rapper to describe his income as “Willie Parker money,” as he does on “Good Evening”). And, of course, “Donald Trump,” the first single off of Best Day Ever, went platinum at a time when Trump was shorthand for nothing but obscene wealth, introducing Miller to mainstream audiences.
The song’s also the most succinct summation of his early career ambitions. In the video for “Donald Trump,” Miller, he of the runty frame and retroactively horrible chinstrap beard, raps: “That’s the way it goes when you party just like I do/ Bitches on my dick that used to brush me off in high school/ Take over the world when I’m on my Donald Trump shit.” Rappers have been using a chip on the shoulder as a motif for as long as the genre’s existed (and beyond the point that any of their doubters can possibly remain) but for Miller and other white rappers, it’s the bedrock of their personas—white rappers are, fairly or not, regarded skeptically outside the mainstream (see: Macklemore and Kendrick Lamar, 2014 Grammy Awards). Miller, perhaps sensing this, built up cred as a producer under the name “Larry Fisherman” as he improved as a rapper, working with everyone from Vince Staples to Schoolboy Q (Rick Ross, on Miller’s “Insomniak”: “Mac Miller/ My real n—a”); consequently, he’s appeased the tastemakers that have so much to do with what succeeds and what doesn’t in the rap world. But it’s not just likability that’s elevated him to these heights.
If those Rostrum mixtapes were high school escapism, then his first studio albums (also with Rostrum), Blue Slide Park (2011) and Watching Movies With the Sound Off (2013) were his intro-level college courses. The production value skyrocketed as Miller moved beyond simple hedonism, musing on everything from his drug addiction to the trappings of mainstream fame. Here he is on “I’m Not Real,” with Earl Sweatshirt:
Allowing birds to fall to their death before they even fly He and I are not the same Doctor, doctor, please prescribe me something for the pain Money in machines, those will make you change
Blue Slide Park was also the first independent album to debut at No. 1 since 1995 (the last album being Snoop Dogg’s Dogg Pound). And yet, Miller didn’t really garner widespread critical acclaim until last year’s GO:OD AM, his first album for a major label, where he finally synthesized the sense of fun of early work with his personal demons to create thoughtful, world-weary songs that were eminently catchy. “Weekend” still gets huge radio play:
What hasn’t changed is Miller’s use of his Judaism, which is similar to Bronson’s. It’s used to invoke his nerdy side, a method of self-deprecation (“I always do it big like a Jewish nose”) that’s immediately followed by a reminder of how successful he is. Jewish is shorthand for nebbishy, essentially.
Lil’ Dicky
No mainstream rapper has ever been as openly, deliberately Jewish as Dave Burd, aka Lil’ Dicky. His first mixtape, So Hard (2013), features Burd standing in the middle of a gigantic, flaming Magen David, and the first track, “Ham,” starts with “Whoa, so hard/ Jews is never supposed to go ham, but fuck it.” It’s a joke, but on another level, it’s illustrative of the struggle at the center of Dicky’s persona—the tug-of-war between Dave Burd, the nebbishy Jew who openly wishes he “could just say black things,” and Lil’ Dicky, the brash, confrontational rapper who goes clubbing with Snoop Dogg and Fetty Wap.
Dicky’s said he felt he “misrepresented” the preeminence of Judaism in his identity in So Hard, and yet, his first studio album, Professional Rapper (2015), released after he made that statement, continues to invoke his Jewishness as central to the persona he’s constructed. On “Parental Advisory (Interlude),” his mother reminds him to get to bed early the night before a show, and when Dave chafes at being lectured (Did Puff Daddy have to deal with this, he wonders?), she tells him, “I’m trying not to be a Jewish mother here, but I really think you’re underestimating this.” He continues to weave “kike” into his rhymes with abandon, a way of identifying himself as Jewish while also distinguishing himself from the type of Jew who’s so stuffy as to take offense at a Jew using that word.
Even though Dicky sees himself as fundamentally apolitical (“I don’t even know the first thing about what Obama do/ I’m better off telling y’all what LeBron been doing”), the particulars of the way he deploys Judaism—as central to Dave, but punch-line material for Dicky—speak to a very specific modern Jewish philosophy. Dicky tries to hold Judaism and what it represents in his music—as something unbecoming of a rapper with aspirations like he does—at arm’s length, while also being unable to escape the way it shaped who he is (see: “$ave Dat Money), and owning that.
The complexities of that identity struggle aside (to say nothing of his relationship with blackness), Dicky’s actually a bit of a throwback. Whereas the next wave of rap seems like it’s going to skew toward the trap-house sensibility, Dicky’s philosophy seems to be couched in a more classical form: good beat, well-constructed concepts to drive each song, and punchline after punchline. Like Bronson, it seems to come from a deep appreciation for his predecessors and the more lyrically focused corners of the genre. He’s new-school in a lot of ways (he came to prominence on YouTube, his lyrics directly address the metatextual aspects of his career more than most rappers care to, his Curb Your Enthusiasm-inflected brand of humor), but when it comes down to the technical aspects of his work, it’s usually as simple as hopping on a beat and letting the bars fly. Which is something he seems to be preternaturally gifted at doing.
Dicky is reflexively self-conscious, which is interesting to a point, but after a while it starts to come off as narcissism; on the outro to Professional Rapper, he describesthis point in his career as “the moment when Truman hits the wall,” referring to Truman’s revelation of a life outside of himself in the movie The Truman Show. Except Dicky seems to interpret that moment as when Truman recognized his own importance, which speaks to the ego it takes to rap with the confidence that he does. Dicky pines to be “one of the greats”; at 28, with a No. 1 rap album under his belt, it doesn’t sound so ridiculous right now.
Drake
As it stands, there is no rapper on the planet more popular than Drake. He’s the most streamed artist in Spotify history, his last six major releases have all gone No. 1, and a Drake feature can put a lesser rapper on the map. Between the release of his masterful If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late (2015), his public beef with Meek Mill, and the cultural event that was the video for “Hotline Bling”—about to reach abillion views on YouTube any minute; embedding it here seems practically redundant—it’s fair to say that Drake owned 2015. The release of Views (2016) kept the momentum going.
A gifted rapper and singer, Drake has cemented his place in the mainstream by attaching himself to producers with great pop sensibilities; meanwhile, he’s able to maintain his status as a critically acclaimed rapper by innovating not only in a lyrical or musical sense but in what it means to be a rapper in the public eye.
Make no mistake: Drake’s early mixtapes are unlistenable. Room for Improvement(2006) is about as easy of a setup as you can ask for, and Comeback Season (2007) only reaffirms the sentiment of the first attempt. Recorded at the tail end of hisDegrassi days, they’re empty boasts, overproduced, and not really representative of his later music. The only thread he’s maintained since those days is the emotionality of the music.
With the release of So Far Gone (2009), Drake, who was starting to make a name for himself after signing to Lil’ Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment, not only fully shed his Degrassi label, but truly dropped one of the best mixtapes of the 2000s. As has become his trademark, he apologized to past loves for his callousness and lack of restraint, all the while plotting his next conquest. For So Far Gone, Drizzy worked with producer Noah “40” Shebib; 40, as he’s known, bonded with Drake over their appreciation for Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak (2008), a dark, textural album heavy on pathos and liberal (perhaps too much so) with autotune. Drake’s sound now—heavy, nocturnal beats that are as suited to his crooning as they are to sneering, vicious bars—is in its infancy on So Far Gone, but even then, it’s spectacular.
After that, everything he touched turned to gold. His debut studio album, Thank Me Later (2010), cemented his status as one of the preeminent rappers in the world, embracing the rapper/businessman model of Jay Z and Diddy with the way it elevated his personal record label, OVO. Yet he was still dogged by accusations of being “soft,” which he didn’t seem to mind; in one of his characteristically mysterious interviews, he referred to his detractors, saying, “You notice they don’t criticize the music itself, though. … I’m OK with that.”
Since then, Drake’s career has seen nothing but overwhelming commercial success, along with serious artistic achievement. Take Care (2011), the follow-up to So Far Gone, was a sprawling, thoughtful meditation on his new fame, less boastful than his past work. “Headlines” and “Make Me Proud” remain some of his most popular songs, while tracks like “The Real Her,” “Lord Knows,” and, especially, “Marvins Room” are perfect snapshots of the Drake aesthetic—dark, brooding, and petty. The central motif of “Marvins Room” is Drake calling up an old girlfriend, telling her she could “do better.”
Nothing Was The Same (2013) was yet another step up, and with the depressive Take Care in the rearview mirror, Drake talked shit on a level he couldn’t before. “Worst Behavior” and “Started From the Bottom” are two of the most fun songs he ever recorded, and “Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2,” with Jay Z, features a beat that lesser rappers would kill for. Drake’s so good on the song, he overshadows it.
Following the surprise releases of If You’re Reading This, It’s Too Late and What a Time to Be Alive (2015), his two most straightforward rap albums, the stage was set for Views, an album he’d been teasing for years. Meanwhile, he’d escaped a beef with Meek Mill over ghostwriting accusations that he should’ve lost, and started to make noise as an anti-internet rapper. “Fuck going online, that ain’t part of my day,” he said on “Energy,” and yet, his meme-ability, frequently updated Instagram account, and domination of online hip-hop gossip say otherwise.
Views had insurmountable hype. Of that, there’s no doubt. But still, the album didn’t live up to his past work, and even though it still debuted at No. 1, Drake’s insistence on delving deeply into his psyche had started to grate.
Drake has straddled his given identities like very few rappers do. His father was black, and he comfortably uses the n-word; however, his mother was white and Jewish, and even though being black and Jewish isn’t a contradiction in any way, it still is perceived that way in the mainstream. He’s embraced it, though. Though his Judaism is usually manifested in punchlines (“Bar mitzvah money like my last name Mordechaiiii”), he still posts Passover pictures on Instagram, and “You and the 6,” addressed to his mother, is as good as a year’s worth of phone calls. And of course, the music video for “H.Y.F.R.” is the greatest moment in Jewish hip-hop history. What other rapper could pull off a bar mitzvah-themed music video with Lil’ Wayne, DJ Khaled, and Birdman?
SONG Joe Hill
