What I'm Listening To in June 2020
This past month, Run the Jewels muddied their politics, Phoebe Bridgers took us to Graceland, and a return to Bon Iver's "RABi" reminded me of what's important.
Every month, I keep an ongoing playlist of songs that I want to keep in my listening rotation. These could be singles, loosies, album standouts, or just songs I can’t get out of my head, but they often have some significance to my own life or the state of the world. June’s playlist sees a reconciliation of protest music and typical summer listens for humid car rides and lazy days. Often these converge in the same song. If you want to get monthly updates on music and other (non-scheduled) things that I’m writing, subscribe to my newsletter!
Here’s what I’m listening to:
Run the Jewels
JU$T (feat. Pharell Williams & Zack de la Rocha)
Run the Jewels’s Killer Mike and El-P aren’t exactly known for their subtlety, and “JU$T” sees the duo recruiting Pharell and Zack de la Rocha to drive the song’s message home with a Looney Tunes-style hammer. The pre-chorus features Pharell punctuating irony-laden statements (“Mastered Instagram ‘cause you can instigate a follow,” he claims. How enlightened.) with “slave,” leading up to the hook: “Look at all these slave masters posing on your dollar.” In case you didn’t catch the double meaning there, perhaps Pharell’s “Get it?” adlib makes it a bit clearer.
Thankfully, I’m still a sucker for these kinds of songs. While I have been more excited for RTJ albums in the past, the maximalist near-pastiche of RTJ’s over-the-top style hasn’t gotten old yet. El-P cartoonishly brags “Lit by the supermoon, I'm too lucid/
Plus got shrooms in the blood, I'm zoomin’ ” before condemning “murderous chokehold cops,” and Zack de la Rocha is a Molotov cocktail complement to the song, adding a spirited verse at the end of the track.
What concerns me about this song, however, is that the politics of the track just don’t seem to line up with the artists themselves. Is this just a fun little activity for the four of them? Killer Mike raps that “I told you once before that you should kill your master,” echoing the shirt he wore at the Atlanta mayor’s press conference while tearily encouraging protestors to essentially be a little nicer. Pharell’s radical chorus also falls flat, given that in 2018 he appeared at a fundraiser for the Israeli Defense Force, condemned for its systematic violence. At least the song makes some points.
MIKE
All Star (feat. Earl Sweatshirt)
At this point, I’m convinced that MIKE cannot make a bad album. His latest, Weight of the World, continues to fit into the rapper’s milieu without becoming stale. “All Star” is a standout track not because of MIKE’s standard soul-sampling, off-kilter, head-nodding beat and muddied vocal mix, but instead because of Earl Sweatshirt’s presence on the track. Earl, for his past two projects, has incorporated the style of MIKE and his sLUms contemporaries into his work, but until “All Star,” the two did not have a widely-released collaboration. “I was in the kitchen with that n***a MIKE,” Earl rapped on his 2018 song “Navy Blue.” “All Star” and its dense, chakra-referencing contribution from Earl finally lets us into what the two can cook up.
Arca
KLK (feat. Rosalía)
Arca and Rosalía seem like a natural pairing on “KLK.” Much like the name of the song (which is an internet-friendly shortening of “Ques lo ques”), Latin goes digital as Rosalía’s neo-flamenco meets Arca’s off-kilter production. Arca incorporates Rosalía into her Reggaeton-ish soundscape, and the singer’s fluttering vocals feel at home layered into this brash speaker-knocker that seems to go nowhere (and that’s not a bad thing).
Kahlil Blu
runway talk (feat. MAVI)
I discovered “Runway Talk” through Alphonse Pierre’s weekly roundup on Pitchfork. Kahlil Blu was a new name to me, but his production credits and the MAVI feature were enough for me to give it a listen, and the track hooked me. The infectious hook and floaty beat initially pulled me in, but MAVI’s contribution gave the song staying power—the D.C. rapper adopts a flow on this song that’s somewhat opposed to his more laid-back, drawn-out style featured on 2019’s Let the Sun Talk, a welcome switch-up.
Beyoncé
Black Parade
Beyoncé’s Juneteenth protest single is yet another song that demonstrates her ability to experiment within the intersection of Pop, RnB, and Hip-Hop. Melodies shift and rhyme schemes melt into each other as Bey jumps between references to her Southern roots, her African ancestry, and revolutionary Black culture. While “Black Parade” isn’t, in my opinion, up to the lofty standard set by her last solo album, Lemonade, the single reminds us that Beyoncé doesn’t need a laundry list of features to run the conversation or the charts.
Spillage Village
End of Daze
Something that I value a lot in a playlist is variety, and Spillage Village’s “End of Daze” gives us a respite from some of dancier, more intense songs. How I feel about the collective’s latest single is about how I feel about the amalgamation of artists: yeah I guess I kinda like it. “End of Daze” features spiritual ponderings and apocalyptic premonitions from Earthgang, JID, Jurdan Bryant, Mereba, and Hollywood JB. If your eyes glazed over about halfway through that list, that’s ok, because there doesn’t seem to be much standing out from any one artist, except perhaps Mereba’s melodic vocals. Other than that, it’s, like, okay.
Run the Jewels
walking in the snow
If you’re aware of one (non-single) track off of RTJ4, it’s probably this one. Killer Mike’s impassioned, cutting verse, written last year, made the rounds on social media early this month because of his prophetic reference to Eric Garner’s, and later George Floyd’s, last words: “I can’t breathe”.” The song is one of the most politically potent on the album; El-P expounds on how cages are “never built for just one group” (although I have to say his internal “wrong mode/ your hole/ no go/ shit moat/ Gitmo/ etc. etc. rhyme scheme is laid on a bit thick). With an uncredited contribution by Gangsta Boo, who I wish featured on more than the hook, “walking in the snow” is RTJ at their best.
Noname
Song 33
Noname’s response to J. Cole’s tone-policing “Snow on tha Bluff,” aided by Madlib production, is probably the best diss track since “The Story of Adidon.” Noname gives equal attention to J. Cole’s weird fixation on one (1) of her tweets that didn’t even call him out by name and the distressing trends of lynchings and violence towards trans black women. Noname masterfully downplays the significance of J Cole’s track while still putting him in his place: “He really 'bout to write about me when the world is in smokes? / When it's people in trees? / When George was beggin' for his mother, saying he couldn't breathe / You thought to write about me?” Even more remarkable is Noname’s walking back of the track just days later: “i didn’t have to respond,” she tweeted. “i let my ego get the best of me.” Her new vanguard, apparently, does not have space for ego or beef.
Phoebe Bridgers
Graceland Too
Last week, I got the opportunity to go stay with my girlfriend for a bit. It felt like the entire time we were humming the chorus of Phoebe Bridgers’s “Graceland Too.” The transition of “she can do anything she wants to” in the first part of the song to “I will do anything you want me to” later on is striking; the whole song blurs the line between helping a loved one and being beholden to them and seems to ask if there is even a difference. I realize that the song is most likely named after the bizarre Elvis shrine in Memphis, but it also, to me, connects in some way with Paul Simon’s “Graceland” (one of my favorite songs on this green planet)—we’re truly all bouncing into Graceland.
Bridgers’s new album, Punisher, front to back, is a progression and perfection of her signature style, and it also sometimes feels like it has been engineered in some kind of ungodly lab to specifically make me sad. “Graceland Too” landed itself on my playlist because of the infectious, folky chorus and balance between hope and sadness, but the entire album is worth listening to (bring tissues).
Teyana Taylor
Made It
While I wasn’t super crazy about Teyana Taylor’s new album—sometimes it feels a bit like I’m listening to the same song a couple of times over, either because the tracks are too long or because the songs are too same-y— “Made It” is just too infectiously upbeat for me to pass up. The end of my June was characterized, tentatively, by some successes and happy times, which prompt just a little celebration. This is realized in Taylor’s flip of “Back That Azz Up;” I will never not like a flip of “Back That Azz Up.” Originally released as a single dedicated to 2020 graduates, “Made It” makes me feel like maybe, just maybe, I, too, am working with some ass.
Bon Iver
RABi
This is a song that I just have not been able to get out of my head this past month (or really ever). The heavenly “I could profit/ I could rob, I” pre-chorus just takes me to another place, as do many other moments from Justin Vernon’s 2019 i,i. I always like to spice my playlist with a little something that I’ve known for a while; it adds some familiarity.
This is a song I added to my playlist very early on in the month; originally it was essentially RTJ, Spillage Village, and Flatbush Zombies, and I, like most other people this month, felt like I needed, if not a respite, then a relaxer, something to ground myself and remind me that there can still be beauty amongst the fires. Not only that—there can be beauty in the fires. “RABi” reminds us that dogma and industriousness are not the end goals; instead, we have to be ok with as much as we can do. Many people are working for a new world, a world that is closer to being realized than ever before, but there are so many seemingly-insurmountable forces against us. It is important to keep in mind that economic success, material betterment, or even general acceptance is not what counts: “Nothing’s gonna ease your mind.” Instead, we can take comfort in a collective struggle and the knowledge that we are irreversibly changing the psyche of our nation. “But if you wait, it won’t be undone.”
Flatbush Zombies
When I’m Gone (feat. Sophie Faith)
I wish Flatbush Zombies’ new EP were longer, but not as long as their last album. It seems like, since 3001: A Laced Odyssey, the group has been feeling out how to grow their viability and legacy in music while still retaining the soul of their promising, if flawed, mixtapes. now, more than ever is a promising step in that direction, showing more restraint and taste than the sprawling Vacation in Hell. “When I’m Gone” is a familiar tread for the group, a track that stares at death and depression in a not-so-unique way, at least for the Zombies.
However, Meechy Darko brings up the rear with a cogent, hard-hitting verse invoking both Mac Miller and the Bible. “Unbalanced chemical, more money, more problems, commas and decimals / I guess that's just what the dollars do,” he raps. More and more, Meechy Darko is separating himself from not only the other Flatbush Zombies members but also his peers in the New York conscious rap scene, some of whom are in the Beast Coast collective in which Darko shines particularly brightly. “Shall I fly without losing my flock? / Will I die before making my mark? / Heaven knows that I gave y'all my heart,” he says in “When I’m Gone.” That’s a reassurance that is in short supply these days.
You can listen to the entire playlist for June 2020 here.