The Neighborhood Kids have been crushing it the last few years with timely, relevant, politically acute rap and hip-hop, and, needless to say, their newest track hit the mark once again.
The song starts off talking about people paying too much attention to their phones and social media, and not paying enough attention to the things happening in the world, but immediately pivots to the news being biased and being a piece of the propaganda machine. The song references Trayvon Martin, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland- all people killed unjustly, often without their killer being punished, and generally killed by the state. While I would say it’s a coincidence that this song came out the day before Alex Pretti was executed by ICE agents, making the themes of this song seem even more important, it’s not, really. It’s not a coincidence because the police kill roughly 1300 people per year in the United States- that’s one person every six and a half hours. The fact that the killing that happened the day after this song was caught on camera and that the person who was murdered didn’t commit a crime makes it slightly more recognizable and polarizing, but the killing itself is not unusual. That’s why the song exists.
The next line, after referencing these victims of racist state violence, is “Everybody put your hands up from the front to the back, we’re not the police, therefore we won’t kill you where you stand”.
The song references immigration deportations, US wars for profit, the hypocrisy of drug wars while American pharmaceutical companies rake in billions for the same drugs, media bias and complicity, and spreading the narratives and propaganda. Every single theme from this song can be discussed in the light of facts from all over the country this month.
This is far from the first song to deal with these issues, and a part of me wants to comment on how prescient the songs are and how well they describe current events, but then I pause and realize that these events never get resolved. This is the United States of America. This is who we are. Police violence, media propaganda, unnecessary war, these are who we are. This is what defines us. There is no American exceptionalism. These songs feel relevant because we never learn from our mistakes. We never change.
The cycle must break- and it won’t if we aren’t the ones who break it.
Written by Gimp Leg
