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Bob Vylan - We Live Here
You can't have equality, you can't change history, you can't get rid of racism, you can't be too extreme, you can't get off the hamster wheel and have education and jobs that are worthwhile and rewarding... You can't. You can't make your own art and matter, you can't release a successful album independently, you can't take on Spotify and the dead hands of the digital dinosaurs and win, you can't mix punk grime and hip hop successfully, you can't adapt the iconography of Jamie Reid and match it... You can't. We always knew this was bollocks, of course, but here is a record to underline the point.
'We Live Here' is a beautiful record. There's the incredible artwork with its nod to the future as well as to the past, the powerful prose of the sleeve notes and the empowering reading list, the subversive white vinyl and the defiling of the Queen. It's beautiful in the anger that crackles off the grooves, the articulate driven rage that boils against a system that is so sick, the way the lyrics mesh with the music like barbed wire to make a greater whole, beats and riffs and words rioting together to show that it's not impossible for music to once again matter and help motivate a generation.
Empowered by Black Lives Matter, people are determined to make their own history, and kick over the statues. Things must never be allowed to go back to the way they were, things must not be allowed to stay how they are, things have to change. Here's some sounds to be part of the playlist to that change. It can be done. It can. Do it.
Rosey R*E*P*E*A*T https://bobvylan.bandcamp.com/ https://twitter.com/BobbyVylan |
