Protest Song QUADRUPLE FEATURE

Anderson . Paak - ‘Lockdown’ 

June 19, 2020 - Aftermath Entertainment

Meek Mill - ‘Otherside of America’

June 5, 2020 - Atlantic Records/Maybach Music

Lil Baby - ‘The Bigger Picture’

June 12, 2020 - Motown Records

JPEGMAFIA - ‘THE BENDS!’

June 24, 2020 - Self-released

June saw a host of protest songs released. Anderson .Paak came out with his intimate and paced-down ‘Lockdown,’ Meek Mill put out the high-energy elegiac, ‘Other Side of America,’ Lil Baby released his gray-area-in-a-difficult-time auto-tuned rap, ‘The Bigger Picture,’ and JPEG Mafia showed up with a Fuck-Trump art trap, ‘The Bends!’ 

Anderson .Paak’s ‘Lockdown’ wastes no time getting into the mired contradictions of the Covid-19 lockdown, the Black Lives Matter swell in response to killings by police and citizens (much of which went unpunished and unaccounted for), and the government-imposed curfews in response to reports of looting.  

Brandon Paak Anderson’s music video opens with illustrations of protest assemblies and signage: “No Justice No Peace,” “George Floyd 8:46,” “Say Their Names,” and “Defund the Police.” Anderson wastes no time, “You should’ve been downtown.” Police sirens sound in the background. The beat is lightly swung. The harmonics are quiet. Anderson’s first verse addresses those who turn a blind eye to the injustices that the black community suffers. He does not buffer his message with any poetics, finding literal language more than enough to address the movement’s detractors: “Said, ‘It’s civil unrest,’ but you sleep so sound/Like you don’t hear the screams when we catchin’ beatdowns?/Stayin’ quiet when they killing’ niggas, but you speak loud/When we riot, got opinions coming from a place of privilege.” 

The video features Anderson with a head wound which the lyrics address as the result of a rubber bullet. It’s a highly intimate film, with cinematic moments lining up in response to verse. Anderson, speaking of George Floyd, says, “Sicker than the COVID how they did him on the ground.” At this point in the video, Anderson is tending to his head wound with his COVID mask pulled under his chin. A female comrade comes up behind him and as the next line comes up, “Speakin’ of the COVID, is that still going around,” she pulls his mask up around his mouth. Anderson’s track says a lot with the facts leading up to Juneteenth. The complicated moment is nowhere near over, and nothing is letting up as Jay Rock lays out on the video version of the track, a poignant acapella right before Anderson’s second verse.

And while Anderson leaves out the partisanship and the political actors in favor of addressing the people at large, Meek Mill takes a more pointed approach. He begins ‘The Otherside of America’ with a clip from Donald Trump’s campaign. Trump’s speech asks the black population “what do you have to lose,” then flippantly cites areas of extreme disadvantage and neglect. Behind the audio file, woodwinds and trumpets stir up a dirge. The track is a constant juxtaposition of wealth and poverty. In the CNN interview with Meek Mill née Robert Rihmeek Williams which closes the track, a portion which doesn’t make it into the song has Williams describing two Americas to explain the punishments for crack versus cocaine.  

Having traversed those lines between what he calls a white and a Black America, Williams pairs his present wealth and success against his austere upbringing. Lines like “jumped off the porch, uh/I got a Porsche, won’t take it back,” and “Mama at work, daddy, he dead, nigga we lonely/Stomach growlin' like a AMG, goin' to bed, we hungry/Uzi on me, all my friends are dead, nigga, we lonely,” transmute Williams’s humble beginnings into an auspicious present. And still, he is pursued by and subject to parole. Even on nights with growling stomachs and few comforts, the dream of success in America lives on in the imagination of Williams’s youth. The wealth that exists in this land is not accessible to much of the Black community, and even upon achieving the kind of success that Williams has, many of the same trappings of systemic racism plague him still. 

Perhaps the least pointed song among these is from Dominique Armani Jones aka Lil Baby. Early in the track, Jones makes a point to say, “every colored person ain’t dumb and all whites not racist.” To many of his listeners, the statement may be obvious, but the point is that it is not obvious to everyone, and anyone that can hear it needs to hear it. Jones solidifies his position, saying, “It’s bigger than black and white/It’s a problem with the whole way of life.” The song features tight but overblown high-hat, a straightforward beat and a somber repetition of piano descents. Jones has a lot to say, at the center of which is the message that division is part of the problem. Trying to expand the middle ground, Jones raps, “Corrupted police been the problem where I'm from/But I'd be lying if I said it was all of them.” There are very few lyrical breaks in the song. The music video is composed mostly of protest imagery which include COVID masks. Multiple shots of Jones rapping in a group of Black Lives Matter protesters. Partly in black and white and partly in color (for message synchronicity), some shots are of the city, and some are of Jones riding a bike and swerving behind a police car (which is in color). A lot of the video is of him rapping in a group of protestors with their fists in the air or of clipped news footage. The effect is somewhere between a stylized staging and a grassroots sensibility. 

JPEGMafia née Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks takes a similar approach to Meek Mill in opening his track. Few things get a listener in the mood for a protest more than a politically charged and ignorant speech from the United States President. There is markedly more playfulness in Peggy’s denouncement. Donald Trump opens the track by thanking the Black community, “But the support we're getting from the African-American community has been overwhelming, and I wanna thank each and every one of you.” In response, Peggy says, “Shit,” and there's clapping. Dissonant pop synth introduces the track and broken beat ties the piece together.  

Probably the most radical of the unaffiliated group, Peggy levels lines like “People pray for the press to impeach/Deeper down, know that vote is a loss/It's sad (Yeah).” The line points to a broken system, insinuating that regardless of the people’s actions in the polls the politics of national government is going to unfold as the wealthy direct it to. ‘The Bends’ refers at least in part to scuba-diving sickness in which, ascending from high pressure to low pressure, nitrogen bubbles form in the bodily tissue during rapid transitions often leading to joint pain. “My leader treat me like an enemy, he a casualty/Wonder if he cry when he sees fans of me/Can't believe we thought he’d be the man for me,” Peggy says. But it’s not the heart of the issue in America.  

The accompanying music video sees the artist donning a bee-keeping suit. Being constantly under attack comes to mind. Yet the setting is an off-the-road field of tall grass and wildflower. What the viewer sees and what Peggy has to be guarded against are two separate things. While much of the song is pointed at the misguided and unwanted leader, there is also the undertone of well-acquainted-ness with rapid escalations in social unrest from the time of slave-owning, which Peggy references thusly: “Black man got it sowed/Get the money, y’all can keep all the hope.” ⛰️