I’ve never seen that on anything like this scale. It says just as much that tons of popular rappers - rappers who aren’t especially known for being political - have come out with their own versions of protest songs in the last few weeks. Out in the world, though, they can function that way. None of these are intentional protest songs. “Lose Yo Job” - a song improvised on the spot by a woman who was being detained, set to a beat and gone viral - has become an unlikely anthem. (Ludacris approved.) I’ve seen Twitter videos of demonstrators chanting songs like Pop Smoke’s “ Dior” and Chief Keef’s “ Faneto” - songs that can make people feel like larger-than-life superheroes. In a spontaneous moment, the people trapped on that bridge transformed “Move Bitch” and used it for their own purposes. It’s a song about being angry that people are driving too slow. Two weeks ago, when New York police kept thousands of protesters trapped for hours on the Manhattan Bridge, the demonstrators chanted the hook from the 2001 Ludacris song “Move Bitch” at them.
“move bitch, get out the way” #NYCCurfew #protests2020 #BlackLivesMattter /x35O32EUoe And sometimes, movements adopt songs and give them new meaning. Sometimes, political songs end up having accidental resonances consider the new Run The Jewels album, where the lyrics about Eric Garner become lyrics about George Floyd because police refuse to stop choking people to death. Anytime people make music about turning to criminal enterprises because it’s their only chance of lifting their families out of poverty, that’s a political act, whether it’s intended to be one or not.
Politics are deeply entwined with rap music. It feels, for the first time I can remember, like a mass protest movement might actually lead to some kind of systemic change.
But the past few weeks have been inspiring. It’s easily to get cynical and pessimistic, especially as global conglomerates do their best to subsume political fury and make it a part of their public-facing identities. In the past three weeks, we’ve seen a widespread global human rights movement, one that started off with police murdering George Floyd and spread outwards from there. But right now, we’re looking at something different. Some musicians build entire careers with them. For decades, the protest song has been woven into the culture of popular music. People never stopped making protest songs.