Sorry. I had to get that out of the way.
Now: here's the video:
I watched it. Tell me what you think. My subjective impression is unavoidably affected by the Ta-Nehesi Coates essay — the subject of the previous post — which attacks Kanye West for wanting a kind of freedom Coates calls "white freedom." Presumably, Coates would approve of Glover. But how dare I, a white person, presume?
Here are the lyrics to "This Is America." I went to Urban Dictionary because I wanted to look up "celly" (cellphone?) and "hunid bands" (??) and I saw that that "caught slippin" is the featured word on the front page. That expression is in the song (repeatedly): "This is America/Don't catch you slippin' up." It was defined in '04 as "to be caught off guard, in a very bad way."
Actually, that lyrics page is full of annotations. No need to resort to Urban Dictionary. About "celly":
This line references the 18 March 2018 shooting of Stephon Clark, an African-American who was killed in Sacramento, California by police who presumed that he was responsible for local area robberies and was armed – only to be found with his iPhone....
Posts
56 comments:
"It was defined in '04 as "to be caught off guard, in a very bad way.""
Eazy-E was using "slippin'" ("Eazy-E, you ever been caught slippin'?" "Hell, no!") back in '88, and I doubt he was the first.
I also recall Ice Cube doing so in '93 in Down For Whatever, too.
... maybe it was always just an NWA thing?
Ann will understand the lyrics better when Maddie Poppe covers the song on the next "American Idol."
Very striking, an impressionistic depiction of the America the artist sees and lives in.
It's important to keep the Democratic base ginned up with the mid-terms coming up. If no blue wave, then no control of the House & Senate. No control of the House & Senate means --- horror of horrors! --- a completed Trump term.
And what does that have to do with a damn music video? I've moved into deep conspiratorial waters where I think that TDS has so affected the other side that it's politics 24x7. Even if Glover is not on board with this thinking, and he just wants to make his music, the producers & corporate distribution networks are all about TDS.
Listen to MSNBC or NPR or read the NYT. It's all about ginning up the base. That's why Kanye West going off the plantation right now is so worrisome to the Dems. In some areas, if even a sixth of the black electorate stays home (common for midterms in any case), it'll be a win for the Repubs.
Glover here is the anti-West.
To me Coates and Maxine Waters prove the necessity of freeing ones self from the “black experience”. Because if “acting ‘black’” means emulating these losers then start appropriating culture by any means necessary from any successsful group available.
Seems like “hunnid” means hundred, so hunnid band would refer to a banded stack of Benjamins.
Yeah, yeah, Sliked bandma Blackyarty
Get my forl, yeah, Block whippinow I'm somerse trabarty
Thug, whildistraig Thill slippin' up
Thish Gamebody
Gunnidget in Black montrand
Dontrand so thatch Gambigns, know (Black man)
Chis in' expenna dowe pareig Thunna
Yeah, Forldish Gambin'
Grabart, Quavo, you slike mont thild
Get foreigns Ameboy
Fork ancell so for mandman (wooh, Blacke forust catch yeah)
I'm got his wand money, Black mance a Black (woo)
+++
Whoever said Markov chains were useless was partially correct.
If you define freedom as different for white people and black people you are racist.
If you say Kanye wants white freedom you are racist.
If your culture villifies “acting white” you are racist.
The black people that push this garbage are tools trying to keep their own people on a plantation.
I haven't spent as much time looking at a man's bare torso since I watched Burt Lancaster in "The Swimmer" a few days ago.
The link to the lyrics is in the post, so please don't post the lyrics in the comments. A portion of the lyrics could be quoted if you want to comment on something, but don't just post the full text.
Video moved me to indifference. But I’m glad that T. Coates has shown that reading comprehension is not his friend. I understood Kanye. He is saying that those who were once victims should free themselves from their mental victimhood and understand they can live free if only they think free. That’s not an idea peculiar to white people only as Coates will have it. It’s a conventional wisdom that black Americans keep themselves on the Democrat Plantation. Kanye says think unconventionally. Which scares mundane thinkers like Coates.
Hard to hear the words as he says them. Mostly what I saw were black people dancing and singing and taking a moment of time here and there to shoot each other.
This seems to be the plantation the left has put them on so about right.
None of that “white” freedom.
Actually, that lyrics page is full of annotations.
It kinda tells you something doesn't it??
The lyrics are a slam about Kanye and how he has a different life than blacks. The unintended irony is that most black Americans don’t live the Gangsta Lifestyle although millions of young people wish they did. So Romantic!
Stupid and dangerous is not good branding for getting ahead, unless you're on a payoff protection gravy train.
I wanted to say something pithy, and droll about the music, but I kept arriving at the same conclusion. It sux.
You would have to know when the song was written, not just when released, to know if this is a reaction to Kanye at all. Songs are often written months/years before being released.
That said, Gover's show Atlanta is some really, really good work. I'm not sure how his alter ego Gambino fits into his message - it is his serious side or his satirical side in contrast to his other work?
I like this tweet from Jon Spense: This is America' tackles police brutality, gun violence, media misdirection, and the use of African Americans as a brand shield, all while dancing in Jim Crow-style caricature, shows a transcendence or mere performance and demands attention," one person tweeted.
"He is saying that those who were once victims should free themselves from their mental victimhood and understand they can live free if only they think free."
Coates, by contrast, is about "get your money, black man."
White freedom vs. black freedom.
"Stupid and dangerous is not good branding for getting ahead"
It can be, for a few individual artists. There is the romance of the bandit and rebel.
This is universal.
In Spain (as elsewhere of course) there is an ancient tradition of romantic bandits, the heroes, or sexy villains, of song and story -
The famous Opera/Zarzuela -
Gato Montes
And the famous pasodoble from it -
Gato Montes - pasodoble
Ann Althouse said..I went to Urban Dictionary because I wanted to look up "celly" (cellphone?) and "hunid bands" (??)
Wiki: Currency Strap
The bank bundles a hundred $100s to make $10k.
Also called a stack. A rack is 10 $100s so a stack is 10 racks. Allegedly a book is ten stacks (or 100 racks) but I've never heard that term used outside of TV/movies.
YT: Childish Gambino freestyle over Drake's Pound Cake
And there are gypsies of course, also romantic figures.
There is alleged gypsy this and that all over Spanish culture.
Lots of people have claimed to be of gypsy descent, as that added romantic authenticity.
But the actual bandits were exterminated by the Guardia Civil, dying in fusillades or on the garrote, and the actual gypsies, romance notwithstanding, were and are poorly treated and aren't anyone's preferred neighbors.
As always, I click on the link to a video you post to at least try to sample it.
So I started this one and lasted until the shot through the head and the "music" started. Just another unlistenable rap song.
And then there are the Mexican narcocorridos.
El Corrido de los Zetas - Beto Quintanilla
The big advantage of these, unlike rap, is they have melodies and you can dance to them.
Ann Althouse said...
The link to the lyrics is in the post, so please don't post the lyrics in the comments
If you're referring to my post(s? Did one disappear?), those are his attempted lyrics run thru a randomizing Markov chain which turns them into a different, but similar, type of nonsense. And if so, it's purty funny that you took them for his lyrics.
production values, great. dancing, so bad it had to be some kind of statement but I don't know what so it kind of failed for me; maybe it meant something to his target audience (although 'target' might be a misfortunate use). lyrics, maybe because I'm an old white guy, terrible. theme: incomprehensible; the comments in the sidebar of the lyrics suggest I'm not the only one that thinks so. Clearly his guy has enormous talent, clearly he either has stunted vision or is so far about anyone else as to be unable to communicate clearly, like abstract art (although maybe you could lay it off to drugs).
'about' should be 'above'
also want to say this is the kind of vision that supports mass shooting as a way to become famous.
I wonder if they use "garner" because while "get" sounds natural to native English speakers, it's harder to translate? I agree garner's ugly and doesn't have the benefit of improving precision of expression. It seems like prescriptivist nonsense to me.
A negro should be able to point a cell phone at a cop in the dark like it's a gun without getting shot. Dat jess sum st8 up raycissism!
I watched the video and thought it was great! Very artsy and he moves well. He is cute but I wish he would do some more work with his body-chest/back/stomach, and waist are way too soft. He needs some definition.
Love his hair.
Isn't he Danny Glover's son. How in the world has he had an authentic black experience? P.S. I really like Donald Glover.
Titus, you don't love handles?
He is no relation to Danny Glover. I don't like any fat or softness anywhere Ralph.
Childish Gambino says it all. Childish by name, childish by nature.
A few thoughts:
Did he have a father in the home?
I don't see much work ethic here.
How many of his victims are black?
"You m**********s owe me" No, we don't.
I got bored after 1:45. Does he get blown up in the end?
Not much of song, but a very interesting video.
I didn't read the lyrics, but I have heard before that "Celly" refers to someone who is your cellmate in prison.
Obviously I have no interest in whatever the young man is going on about, so I didn't click the video, but in my experience, "celly" is analogous to "roomie"--it refers to your cellmate.
I'm not his target audience, and I'm probably not even the audience he wishes to offend.........Well, there are no mournful Irish ballads lamenting the death of Michael Collins at the hands of the IRA. Black people aren't the only people on earth to elide the tricky parts of their history.
Agreed, Titus. If he wants to prance around with his shirt off, he needs to do a few more sit ups.
Finally someone in the black community is acknowledging that young black men kill lots of people. Props to Glover.
Racism and the legacy of slavery are part of the equation, but the claim that they are the sole and exclusive cause of bad news in the black community is also part of the equation.
Was this better or worse than The Swimmer?
Is this the kind of rich man literature takes seriously now?
This male torso week on Althouse? You know Frank Langella was actually a hunk once.
"I haven't spent as much time looking at a man's bare torso since I watched Burt Lancaster in "The Swimmer" a few days ago."
Don't you require Meade to work the yard topless?. Make yourself a cold ice tea, put him to work, and think of Cool Hand Luke.
If he gives you any back talk, you tell him that "What we have here is a failure to communicate."
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it," ~ Justice Potter Stewart
I looked up "virtue signaling" in the dictionary, and found this example:
"Very striking, an impressionistic depiction of the America the artist sees and lives in."
--Robert Cook
Oddly enough, I looked up "rhetorical felching" and found the same quote.
Why is it that whenever a real or self-styled artist shoots for "profound," they always end up hitting "farce?"
I am SO sorry I looked up the definition of "felch".
And just before dinner to boot.
convincing shooting.
Needs poolside twerking.
One or both are rabid diversitists. West seems to be following the advice of MLK, Jr. to avoid color color judgments ("diversity").
I thought the teenage dancers were nice, but I still bailed after the choir was massacred. Did they buy it, too?
“If you're referring to my post(s? Did one disappear?), those are his attempted lyrics run thru a randomizing Markov chain which turns them into a different, but similar, type of nonsense. And if so, it's purty funny that you took them for his lyrics.”
Yes, and I apologize for completely missing that.
Titus said...
I watched the video and thought it was great! Very artsy and he moves well. He is cute but I wish he would do some more work with his body-chest/back/stomach, and waist are way too soft. He needs some definition.
Love his hair.
5/7/18, 2:18 PM
Curiously you do not say whether you would do him.
Titus needs to evaluate "his hog"...
Standards, ya know.
Sebastian said...
"He is saying that those who were once victims should free themselves from their mental victimhood and understand they can live free if only they think free."
Coates, by contrast, is about "get your money, black man."
White freedom vs. black freedom.
5/7/18, 12:39 PM
Coates is the quintessential crab in the bucket. If Kanye only said that people should quit thinking like the crab in the bucket like he meant to say, he'd be in a lot less trouble now.
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