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As a conscious musician who embraced politics after years of organizing hip-hop artists and MCs around the country [ [link removed] ] to occupy public space, it always excites me to see other artists step forward to speak truth to power.
The need grows only more urgent as institutions from the Pentagon to the Democratic Party, to a disturbing swath of universities [ [link removed] ] across the country, join together to embrace an authoritarian vision [ [link removed] ] that precludes meaningful dissent in a country that absurdly claims to lead “the free world.”
Over the weekend, Macklemore released a new track addressing the genocide in Gaza that demands attention. This post includes his latest music video, analyzes some of its most poignant lyrics and imagery, and explores how it relates to well-established themes in international hip-hop decrying police violence. It also features the work of other artists from the United States to France and Palestine, and a song I wrote and co-produced nearly a decade ago connecting the dots between police violence in the United States and Israel’s longstanding apartheid in Palestine.
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Hip-hop’s most central theme
Hip-hop was born as a medium of expression among urban youth alienated from a civilization that treated them like cannon fodder. Born in the era when the CIA was running crack cocaine into U.S. cities [ [link removed] ] to fund its internationally illegal terrorism in Latin America, hip-hop offered an array of artists a vehicle to observe the hypocrisy and brutality of a country with no commitments to its stated principles.
State violence, and its impacts on communities, were among the most consistent themes of early hip-hop. While tracks like “Fuck the Police [ [link removed] ]” by N.W.A. and “Cop Killer [ [link removed] ]” by Ice-T forcefully addressed police violence, others like “Officer [ [link removed] ]” by Pharcyde explored the same issues with a tongue-in-cheek tone employing humor.
A medium of global resistance
Predictably, the art form attracted the interests of young people in other countries confronted by similarly arbitrary state violence, and political systems that turned deaf ears to their struggles.
In France, MCs of African descent pioneered a new wave of hip-hop [ [link removed] ] in the 1990s, led by the iconic MC Solaar. His song “La vie est belle [ [link removed] ]” includes the following lyrics (translated [ [link removed] ] into English from the original French):
I read in the papers that I'm in the Axis of Evil
I read between the lines and understand they want me dead
So I lock the door so I can be calm.
It's the war outside, I think it's coming towards me
Despite the demos, he who lives will see it*
I put sandbags in my living-room
Bastards want to shoot me
Another legion of voices emerged from Palestine, reflecting in both English and Arabic on life under apartheid. Their music helped explain how the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza represented a long-standing genocide whose escalation many Americans have only begun to recognize in the past year.
MC Abdul [ [link removed] ] is one of them. While any number of voices might seem to rival his, he stands well apart from most of his contemporaries by virtue of his remarkable prescience and precociousness. When he released “Shouting at the Wall” in 2021, he was just 12 years old [ [link removed] ].
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What solidarity looks like
Macklemore’s latest track, “Hinds Hall,” is significant for many reasons.
As a white American artist who has not himself been subjected to the experience of the Palestinians, his song represents a crucial message of international lyrical solidarity. Macklemore is also an independent artist, uncensored by corporate record contracts that have limited the expression of most other artists with similarly vast audiences.
“Hinds Hall” riffs on many themes, including the brutal repression of student activists [ [link removed] ] by authorities across the United States, the cowardice of a political system that remains dedicated to genocide [ [link removed] ] despite sustained and escalating global outrage [ [link removed] ], and the complicity of figures including politicians and journalists [ [link removed] ] unwilling to challenge the ignorance that enables American & Israeli belligerence and disregard for human rights.
Both countries have flatly refused [ [link removed] ] to comply with international law, making cultural resistance by conscious artists all the more critical. Macklemore’s powerfully expansive lyrics [ [link removed] ] find further expression in the remarkable imagery compiled in his music video.
To whatever extent a picture conveys a thousand words, “Hinds Hall” represents an entire book. It explains that the Israeli state has long relied on apartheid, as well as the role of the United States in enabling Israel’s ongoing, internationally criminal genocide across Gaza.
My favorite lines in the song are where Macklemore addresses President Biden [ [link removed] ] directly, noting how he has pissed away his presidency, laying bare the farce of the 2024 election [ [link removed] ]:
Destroyin' every college in Gaza and every mosque
Pushin' everyone into Rafah and droppin' bombs
The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all
And fuck no, I'm not voting for you in the fall.
Can you hear me now?
In 2016, I co-produced a song that I wrote during the 2014 Ferguson uprising [ [link removed] ] connecting police violence in the United States to Israel’s longstanding violence against Palestinian civilians. “Ferguson to Jerusalem” focuses on many of the same themes that Macklemore explored more recently, from the history of the Nakba [ [link removed] ] (which western news outlets consistently overlook when reporting on the Middle East) to the cruel & senseless conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-semitism that Israeli apologists use to smear their critics.
In addition to “Ferguson to Jerusalem [ [link removed] ],” and “NSA vs USA [ [link removed] ],” I wrote & recorded a third song, “Legacy of Ashes,” examining the criminal history of the CIA. I hope, with enough support, to eventually release all three songs as an EP.
One hopes that they will be less relevant by that point.
But don’t hold your breath.
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