I caught strains of Public Enemy’s struggle music as I strolled in the park last night. I sped up, then slowed down to keep in time with the old School brother who was bringing the noise to walkers in the city. The 2020 remix of “Fight the Power” sounded ageless.
P.E.’s update, though, may not be quite as daring–or tuned to our time–as another hip hop song I heard last week, thanks to another generous brother-teacher, who hung out on the 79th St. pier and played night music for the people. “Life is Good”–a collaborative song-rap by Drake and Future, which dropped last January–opens with a sample from Gregorio Allegri’s 13th C. choral plea “Miserere mei Deus” (Have Mercy on me, O God). The melody from that less than obvious source for a hip hop song moved me to head out on the pier, though a brisk breeze was blowing in from the river. “Miserere’s” sample seems to have hinted at what was coming–a year in which 1 in 1000 Afro-Americans would die in the pandemic. (“What do you have to lose?”) The song, though, as enacted–reimagined really–in the video below is all about being black and going on.
The video starts with a street scene of the two stars “working on the weekend, like usual.” They’re rolling on the back of a garbage truck. Drake namechecks a pricey piece of jewelry on his wrist, but this video is miles away from biz-as-usual trap rap about big bank, gold-diggers, guns, and the illegal economy. After Drake and Future arrive as trashmen at the top of the video, they cycle through a range of regular jobs–car mechanic, cook, fast-food checkout clerk, computer technician, audio tape librarian, film crew cameramen and best boy. Drake delivers his last line–“You’re the boss”–to the video “director” without ironic shade. He and Future aren’t trashing jobs they don’t have to do. They’re aligning their own hip hop work ethic–both of them are famously productive–with that of everyday people. Watching “Life is Good” I flashed on Jesse Jackson’s 1988 Convention speech. The video amounts to something like the upside of Jesse’s imperishable litany:
Most poor people are not on welfare. Some of them are illiterate and can’t read the want-ad sections. And when they can, they can’t find a job that matches the address. They work hard every day. I know. I live amongst them. I’m one of them. I know they work. I’m a witness. They catch the early bus. They work every day. They raise other people’s children. They work every day. They clean the streets. They work every day. They drive dangerous cabs. They work every day. They change the beds you slept in in these hotels last night and can’t get a union contract. They work every day.[1]
Work for Drake and Future, as for Jesse, means dignity. It can’t be mocked. Jobs make it possible to chase what makes life livable–art-on-the-side (Future, post-shift, tells Drake he’s saving up for studio time) or round-the-way girls who slide by as brothers are working…
A Drake line from “Life is Good” has picked up new weight: “Haven’t done my taxes, I’m too turnt up.” Drake’s confession has an extra kick since we’ve learned our faux-millionaire President paid $750 in taxes in his first year in office. Much less than what’s paid by numberless black men who work (on the weekend as Trump golfs) in any of those jobs that Drake and Future try on in “Life is Good.”
YouTube respondents have jumped on Drake’s line in the last couple days:
“Drake: Haven’t done my taxes, I’m too turnt up
Trump: This that real music man”
It’s not enough, though, to keep up. That jokey equation may be too knowing. Of course snark is everywhere online. Another respondent to “Life is Good” mocked the un-scuffed up garbage truck in the video, suggesting it ruined a “poverty immersion” tour. But the video isn’t precious. Nor is it poverty porn though it takes in the working poor. The video gets reel about black men’s working lives. No doubt that’s why it’s been viewed over a billion times. (1,060,905,865 as of last night; “Fight the Power 2020,” by contrast, has 450,000 views.) Let’s hope multitudes who long for images that link their working lives with the promise of happiness realize they have nothing in common with the lazy blowhard in the White House.
Note
1 Jesse went on:
“No, no, they are not lazy! Someone must defend them because it’s right, and they cannot speak for themselves. They work in hospitals. I know they do. They wipe the bodies of those who are sick with fever and pain. They empty their bedpans. They clean out their commodes. No job is beneath them, and yet when they get sick they cannot lie in the bed they made up every day. America, that is not right. We are a better nation than that. We are a better nation than that.”