“Turtle Song” (Hugo Largo)

Two-bass attacks are uncommon, what with the risks of a muddy low end or bottom line. Plying the upper (chordal) registers, a combination of four- and eight string basses wend along, sometimes meeting for unison voicings. Our pitiable narrator is the murky base. Sequestered in a “well” (or shell), her head pops up and out every now and again, but only in projection. Professing whiteness (“Indians . . . [are] so smart”) and desiring animality (“that excites me”), it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that she’s merely sheltered and listening to the “echo” of the small world around her. But don’t forget the power of a “wish”: beginning to imagine “someone else’s thoughts” and inviting strangers into one’s life. Sonically and politically committed to mingling without overdetermination and difference with spite for location. An excitation.

“Kawa-Liga” (Hank Williams)

It’s all about a tree that has been cut, modified and commodified—turned into a red, cigar-store Indian. On the one hand, the tree, in the form of the brave warrior, aspires to human status. It wants to “show” something to the world—to speak and interact, for example, with the wooden Indian maiden across the street, peeking out from the antique store. But it also remembers a time before commodification, “when he was still an old pine tree,” communing in the forest. Perhaps this is the whole of the problem of the stereotype. It necessarily tends toward hardened inertia, and yet there is no clear alternative. Yes, one can fight stereotypes, and replace nasty, old types with seemingly benign and corrected new ones. But no matter how proud one is of these achievements, petrification begins again with representation and the market. A kind of reverse-Pinocchio strategy remains strangely plausible, however, and it starts by pining for the unformed.

“I Don’t Like” (Chief Keef)

In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama declared that a “defining project of our generation is to restore [the] promise” of “the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead” despite the “accident of [your] birth.” With the introduction of the “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, however, we’re encouraged to think structurally, from increased pre-school (“public savings” and a return on investment!) to “fair discipline practices” in schools and criminal court systems. Lest we think he’s appealing to crusty Baby Boomers in the former and white liberals/wonks in the latter, keep in mind that young men of color are a “drag on State and Federal budgets” that should be salvaged in order to “unlock their full potential.” (But as Michelle Obama points out, if her parents “did everything right,” their children would just “have a chance.” Slim odds, slimmer hopes.) Enter Chief Keef, avatar of Chicago lawlessness. There’s a whiff of racial discipline all around. Reviewers called his album everything from “irresponsible, unforgiving, and often infectious” to a representation of African American culture. How can young black and brown men account for themselves given these odds? Here, the trax flounders: snitches, whiners, pregnant women, wanna-be drug kingpins are all objects of derision. Then again, it’s also about cuckolding you. A monetization of the outlaw—both ways. Isn’t this what the whole conversation is about?

“Refrain” (Lys Assia)

Is the “refrain” in the repetition, the singularity of the melody, or the repression of impatience? A bit of all, to tell the truth. As the first Eurovision Song Contest winner (1956), it’s a way to understand Europe’s sense of being at a particular moment. But it’s not a European song inasmuch as a Swiss song in French, which beat out the German Swiss song. This descent down the location ladder is challenged by the inversely proportional desire to sing particularly (here, of an experience), setting up the trax’s loop: the proper way of being and comportment writ large must be miniaturized in order to be magnified. The chanteuse sings in the present to the love of her youth, noting a sense of mutual maturity while lamenting what’s been lost. Instead of melancholy in which what has been lost must eventually disappear into a generalized longing, this could be taken as a desire to differ from one’s self—a need to retain previous identities to register one’s difference from them. What matters is a promise to decide, continually, on the promise of such difference.

“Unlimited Capacity for Love” (Grace Jones)

After the loving community—an insomnia-induced incarnation desiring a prenuptial agreement for inclusion—hits the “floor,” singer wonders how one can “add another to love” without inheriting “classic” community’s exclusions. Lacerating kick drum and staccato descending bass figure point the way, repeatedly; it’s the rest/pause which can admit the rest of us (without worrying about dividends). In the reverse: apart from “hope” and “without pressured expense,” one should only fret about how to expend love without short-changing.

“Creepin’” (Grand Funk Railroad)

Secrety, slowly, and incrementally the country no longer is in the hands of the people (sure, sure: we certainly live in a land where leaders endorse Leo Straussian lying and misdirection). And by “tomorrow,” it’ll all be gone: in the hands of the “fools” who are “rapin’ the land.” Long organ lines and hard-rock crooning turn this into a lament: it’s nearly (or really) too late for action. But, were we all to “wake up” right now, we could turn this country in something “strong” and full of “class.” Creepy.

“Shook Ones, Pt. II” (Mobb Deep)

As a remix of an earlier, forgotten single often described as “sinister” and having “stakes in the streets,” it’s the claim that the trax is an example of “rap vérité” which proves (unintentionally) helpful. From jump, Prodigy exploits this: the listener is “stuck off the realness” of affect-less characters with gang loyalties. Yet the stakes of realness aren’t in the streets; they reside in those who are slumming it, vicariously rehearsing the rags-to-riches-to-rags (-to-grave) persona (and keeping their “shook” sensibilities at bay). But there’s no “halfway” engagement when “react[ion]s” between those of “no relation” are all this world asks of you. Moments of anxiety are nested within, manifested through questions of doubt (“do I deserve to live[?]”), motive (“thirsty for recognition”), and legitimacy (“I’mma live illegal”). Read against voyeuristic tendencies, the rub: “I’m creeping” beyond the “petty thinking” and watching you watching me.

“Home Security” (Trans Am)

Though the perimeter can be secured safe enough, it’s on the edge/fringe where intrusions happen regardless of the setup/theorization. Synth-bass double-time sections intensify, with shifting snare timbre emphasizing more maniacal attempts at a total lockdown of the home. Half-time outro (with whole note bass accompanying riffing, drums at home in the security state) never repulses the synth hum: the outside lives with/in the borders and the nation.

“Niggers Are Scared of Revolution” (The Last Poets)

Verbal whipping of “niggers,” who are “everything but themselves” these days. Which is to say: American Blacks are degraded, violent, sex-obsessed, pimping fools, and need to be shocked into recognizing who they really are, if the Revolution is to come. Background drums make it crystal clear: these figures must recover their African roots, and get behind the beat. But where’s the Revolution in such disciplinary maneuvering? Or: if patrolled identity normativity is the pre-condition of Revolution, then the Revolution is everything but itself.

“Golden Country” (R.E.O. Speedwagon)

According to this trax, there’s a certain kind of joy associated with being an embarrassed American. R.E.O. Speedwagon’s statement song—released two years before Nixon’s resignation and in the midst of continuing domestic/Vietnam violence—lyrically shifts the sheepishness over to those in power, momentarily. Your faces must be “so red,” we hear, given the race riots and “cryin’” of the anti-war left. And America’s general neglect of the poor, the starving, and the vulnerable will lead to only one result if there isn’t a day of (self-)reckoning: “your country will burn.” Shaming the powerful, the people will “put an end” to “all this ugliness.” But there’s a note of abandonment here as well. “Before we leave,” we’ll have to “make a stand.” Wait. Where are we going? Maybe more importantly, where’s the band going? Ending before a beginning, while everything’s started already. What looks like the verge is a monetization of protest—astroturfed, as well. An inadvertent antecedent to FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, and Trumpism more generally. When standing up also means ponying up.