After a decade of bland tunes dominating the pop world, good music has at last stormed the country. This has happened largely under the guise of protest music. I use the term broadly to mean music that confronts social ills. This could be injustice, conformity, hypocrisy, whatever. Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” has thrust the matter into the spotlight, of course. Discourse about the song has flooded the news cycle, spawned YouTube commentary, and propelled the music video to an astonishing almost one billion views. Although not the only cause, the rise and election of Donald Trump certainly energized this wave. Perhaps this heralds a new era of great music.
Precursor: D’Angelo and Black Messiah
One can make a good case that D’Angelo helped launch this trend. At the tail end of 2014, he released Black Messiah. In May 2015, “The Charade”—a song inspired by the same incidents that gave rise to Black Lives Matter—became the album’s second single. Interestingly, the album’s concept originated much earlier. At the end of 2011, producer Questlove said the album was 97% finished, and compared it to another landmark social commentary album, Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On from 1971. Still, it took another three years before the album came out. Black Messiah garnered a Grammy for Best R&B Album.
Todrick Hall Speaks His Mind
In 2016, Todrick Hall launched his conceptual music/video project Straight Outta Oz. Adapting The Wizard of Oz to tell his personal journey of self-discovery, the songs portray a struggle against injustice in many guises: racism, homophobia, sexism, and predatory executives. The music comes across as unabashedly pop, with a healthy dose of rap and EDM, and manages to be clever, powerful and tuneful. Forbidden, his 2018 follow-up, continues to explore these themes through a fictional character. Forbidden charted #2 on iTunes, proving that protest music can be popular.
Protest Messages from Sheila E. and Janelle Monae
Sheila E. released an anti-Trump album in September 2017, Iconic: Message 4 America. She deftly covers a number of songs from another great protest era, the late 60s and early 70s. Her re-working of “The Star Spangled Banner” is a tour-de-force. Just last month, Janelle Monae released a full-length music video in the same conceptual mold as Todrick Hall. Her album, Dirty Computer, confronts a fictional future where society attempts to erase “improper” behavior. Simply being rebellious or questioning the status quo invites intervention. At the last minute, Monae’s character and her comrades fight back to assert their independence against mind control. The powerful music and visuals reinforce the importance of standing up for freedom.
Until recently, great music has mostly been confined to the margins of popular music. Now that seems to be changing as artists become energized in the spirit of protest. It’s no accident that the artists mentioned above all hail from communities of color. If anything positive can be said about the Trump era, it may be that once again we have been blessed with music that is both great and popular.
Honorable Mentions:
Snoop Dogg — “BadBadNotGood” (Mar 2017)
