I Can’t Stay Mad at John Mellencamp
I take back half the bad things I said about John Mellencamp for the jingoistic ditty that ended up on the Chevy commercial, and served as the soundtrack to the jumbotron video of Americans with high tech weapons patrolling the Iraqi landscape to blow up some A/RABs.
Mellencamp’s Jena video is awesome. The song is to Jena what “Ohio” was to Kent State. Okay.. maybe that’s stretching it a bit. It’s nice to see John Mellencamp getting down with some serious populism once again.
I wonder if they’ll play THIS song at the World Series?
Yeah I can’t say I think its a great song, but hey at least he’s trying. It’s definitely not “Ohio” then again thats a pretty high bar to set and the simple repetitive phrase “four dead in O-hio” just cuts right through you. “ooh Jena” just doesn’t have the same punch. Again his intentions are good and as far as I know no other major singer has done anything.
Although I do know that Mos Def, Talib Kweli and M1 of Dead Prez worked to get coverage of the October 1st walkouts for the Jena 6, but I’m actually surprised none of them have come out with songs about it. Actually I’d like to see the three of them do a song together on the subject. I’m not sure if you care for hip-hop at all but those I just named are among the few socially active hip-hop artists. Dead Prez is definitely the most radical of them, they have lyrics like,
“who shot Biggie Smalls?
If we don’t get them, they gon’ get us all
I’m down for runnin’ up on them crackers in they city hall”
Their performance alone on Dave Chapelle’s Block Party makes it worth renting. Of course if you just don’t like hip-hop thats fine too, its just music.
Mos Def and Talib Kweli are also very good and not as inflammatory, but still hiting on serious topics, Mos Def being the only major artist I know of thats tackled the water issues in the song, New World Water.
Anyway thanks for the video, oh and your youtube video must be down, but it was easy enough to find so thanks.
Funny you should mention Mos Def. I just read about him on Rebel Frequencies. There was a link to an interview he did with Bill Maher, and it was incredible. He seems to be full of what I miss most in hip-hop, which is intelligent anger aimed directly at the system. I haven’t heard this in my limited exposure to hip-hop since BDP and Public Enemy, who I absolutely love. Mos Def is on my list of stuff to listen to, but I haven’t quite gotten around to it yet.