mugzi wrote:Mecca wrote:j4remi wrote:
Good concept, but execution...idk, not as hype about it as a lot of people are. The two things I keep coming back to are what it sounds like if you're not watching the video and then is there a clear stance or message? Feels to me (call me a snob that's fine) like a lot of talking points without much actual insight. Just to back that up, I have some old HS acquaintances that three memes away from full-on alt-right who were sharing and liking this ish and I don't imagine them relating to or even really hearing the second verse.
Bingo.
DJBooth wrote an article articulating that.
http://djbooth.net/news/entry/2017-12-06-joyner-lucas-im-not-racist
Both verses were on point. I liked the song because it was a relevant, contemporary high concept song/ social commentary video that no one else seems to be doing right now.
Although I definitely saw and felt like there was a lot of similarities between this artist and hopsin.
Nothing about the 2nd verse was on point and I would spend a long time explaining why but this article (my friend sent it to me after I had a long ass rant about the song because once he read it he understood what I was saying) is basically my rant word for word.
https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/the-problem-s-with-joyner-lucas-im-not-racist-explain-1820888539So what are your problems with it?
The most obvious part, after watching this three times now, is that the black guy’s rebuttal is weak as ****. The white guy spits all of the Breitbart and Bannon talking points, and the black guy cites ... Tupac?
It’s an empty coolness because the concept—the song and the video—is based on a faulty premise.
What’s that?
That white people’s race-related gripes and black people’s race-related gripes are equal—equally justified and deserving of equal time and attention. They are not. There is no conversation that needs to happen between the races in order to create some measure of truce and racial conciliation. The only conversation that can do that is white people talking to other white people to try to find a way to be less awful to black people.
Let me put it this way: How offensive and absurd would it be if, instead of a black person and a white person having this conversation, it was a Jewish person and a Nazi?
Um, that analogy doesn’t work. No one would dare do something like that.
Actually, the analogy works specifically because no one in their right mind would dare do something like that. We give the Holocaust the respect it deserves. We recognize the horror of what happened to Jewish people and the evil of the Nazis. (Well, we generally do these things.)
The message on-screen at the end of the video provides a perfect snapshot of the faultiness of this premise. It states, “We were all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics divided us, and wealth classified us.” It’s fulfilling and uplifting in the same bag-of-Cheetos way. But this video is dealing specifically with American race relations between black Americans and white Americans. And saying “until race disconnected us” removes the very active role white people had in creating race specifically to disconnect.
I mean there's nothing more that can be said about this song this article didn't hit on. Go check out the YouTube comments and people saying the white dude "won the argument". Joyner Lucas just tried to both sides racism in America on this song.
Shout out to that trash song Em just did about police violence too. At least his premise wasnt bad his execution just was.
