5 Kendrick Lamar disses that might as well be directed at the RNC...
...aka how do we even approach this conversation?
Hi everyone. It’s been a minute since I last posted. Which is funny to say because that minute has felt like an eternity if we’re looking at things from the context of our modern break-neck-news-cycles. My last post was about the debates. Since then we’ve had, inhale, the Supreme Court granting the president immunity for “unofficial” acts, a Trump appointed judge dismissing the classified documents case against him, Y2K coming about 24 years late, we lost Shannon Doherty and Richard Simmons, Biden got COVID (and may be seriously considering dropping out?), but not before, oh yeah, that whole assassination attempt on a former president episode, which leads us to said former president concluding the Republican National Convention with a rambling 90 minute speech as their official nominee.
It feels like now, more than ever, the news is just an open torrent out of a broken faucet. With unprecedented story after unprecedented story spewing forth from the opening. Here’s a little insider secret folks: you know that feeling you have right now? That one where you just want to shut out the onslaught of news? Many of us writers have that same feeling. This is compounded by the fact that it’s becoming even more difficult to approach how to write about the mounting pile of excrement that is our current state of affairs. After this past weekends assassination attempt, it was particularly difficult for me. I have two current pieces at the ready for this column. One is the second part of my exploration of the relationship between factories and small-towns “post” COVID. But it felt kind of weird to write about that in the wake of a former president getting shot. Not that the factory story isn’t important, but that it would get lost in the shuffle of such monumental and fast paced coverage. Or maybe it felt too heavy when things were already so heavy and charged? The other story I’ve had for a while now is about my relationship with Chess. Specifically how I’ve been doing chess problems everyday for almost two years and the surprising things I’ve learned about myself from that process. But you can see the other side of that too right? How it also feels weird to write about that in our current state of affairs. This is an over simplification, but it feels like when it comes to writing in the midst of everything going on, you can lean into the escapism or face the political headwinds straight on. This column has always existed in this liminal space between the political and the personal. In that, I try to humanize what some would categorize as the political via my own lived experience. But in these last few weeks, every time I sat down to work on a post, it just didn’t seem to work. And then. I made a connection. And I knew I would have a lot to say on the matter. Heads up: for those of you not following the rap game/not privy to the feud between Mr. Kendrick Lamar and Aubrey Drake Graham, you better hold on to your butts.
Trust me I could give you the whole play-by-play of the Kendrick and Drake beef. I started to do a write up but could feel my hyper fixation dragging me into the shadow realm. If you really must know the nitty gritty, comedian Josh Johnson does a great job of breaking it down. (He starts the discussion with, “My, my my. What a time to be alive…”
If you really don’t know or care to watch a 27 minute (!) primer on the beef. Here is my completely biased Kendrick Stan take on it. Our guy won. To tie it all to the rest of this piece. Imagine, for a moment, that in that already-infamous debate from a few weeks back, that Trump was facing a dream scenario Biden. One whose lucidity and oratory prowess was able to beat Trump both in an intellectual way, but at Trump's own game as well. That’s what it’s been like for rap fans in the last few months. Fam’ we’ve been eating. Which is that connection I alluded to earlier. In a lot of ways, it felt like this rap beef was echoing a lot of the same battles unfolding on the presidential stage. How do you present nuance in the face of oversimplification? How do we deal with the fact that the lowest common denominator discourse has this ability to drown out valid counter arguments? And oh yeah...before you accuse me of making light of things by shoe-horning rap into this discussion. Tell that to the utterly bizarre Trump rap video starring some dude and Amber Rose(?) that was played at the convention.
Enough jibber jabber. Let’s get to the rhymes.
You're movin' just like a degenerate, every antic is feelin' distasteful I calculate you're not as calculated, I can even predict your angle
Was there every any doubt that the former president would use a victim of the shooting as a political stunt? It’s really giving him huggin’ and kissin’ the American flag vibes.
Never-mind that it took him four days to call the widow of the slain firefighter. Unfortunately this is one of the ways the K.dot/Drake beef differs from U.S. politics, because even though it’s incredibly easy to predict the angles that the MAGA republicans will take…it still seems to win over their supporters hook, line and sinker. (Do yourself a favor and don’t look up the twitter responses in support of Trump’s show of kissing up on the uniform.)
I hate when a rapper talk about guns, then somebody die, they turn into nuns Then hop online like "Pray for my city," he fakin' for likes and digital hugs
I got to be real careful here. Lest those that claim they are against cancel culture try to go and cancel me. (Just look at how they did Tenacious D dirty.) For the record I am very much against the attempted assassinations of any public figures (that I even have to say that is a testament to how bonkers things are nowadays). BUT what I will say is this seems like such a clear-cut case of the right holding extreme double standards. Not only am I talking about the countless examples of Trump calling for violence against his political opponents, but also how others in the party have mocked the successful attacks of those on the left. No I’m also talking about the hypocrisy that is taking place when folks are on the hunt to dox anyone that they get a whiff might be making light of the situation. Perhaps we should merely quote the former presidents words back at him. When, only a few days after a school shooter killed a sixth grader and injured 7 others in Perry, IA, Trump said, “It’s just horrible…But (we) have to get over it, we have to move forward.”
I got a son to raise, but I can see you don't know nothin' 'bout that Wakin' him up, know nothin' 'bout that Then tell him to pray, know nothin' 'bout that Then givin' him tools to walk through life like day by day, know nothin' 'bout that Teachin' him morals, integrity, discipline, listen, man, you don't know nothin' 'bout that Speakin' the truth and consider what God's considerin', you don't know nothin' 'bout that
Of all the grifts that Trump and the Republican party have pulled over their constituents, Trump as a god-fearing-messiah-figure has to be at the very top.
Our family has actually seen this play out in our personal relationships. I’m betting there may be more than a couple of readers that have had similar experiences in the last week. Where the assassination attempt was too big of an event for folks to keep silent on their differences. Their was one childhood friend that gave out an ultimatum, “If you don’t completely think this is the worst thing to ever happen to our country then go ahead and un-friend me.” When pressed on this, and their apparent fervent support of Trump they divulged. “He’s a great man. He’s going to fix this country.” That so much of the rhetoric of the shooting is about divine intervention should be further warning of the false idolization taking place.
Fake bully, I hate bullies, you must be a terrible person Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it
Another tightrope. A couple things. First off I think the term “Fake bully” needs some explaining, because I think we can all agree that Trump is very much a bully. But this also made me think of the idea that he is spreading incendiary rhetoric on things he doesn’t really believe. He’s a fake bully in the sense that his basis for bullying is dictated by whatever he thinks will galvanize his supporters. I mean, there’s a whole wiki on the flip-flopping of his political positions before he became president.
This second line is where things get interesting. Consider the following quotes, “I’m a Never Trump guy…I never liked him,” and “My god what an idiot.” Both quotes are from his own pick for Vice President, J.D. Vance. He’s also on the record for calling him “noxious” and “reprehensible.” You tell me if you think, in J.D.’s heart of hearts, he’s actually changed his view on the guy…or is it more likely that he has been pulled, kicking and screaming, to the reality that is a MAGA centric republican party. Why don’t you ask Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, and any other number of spineless republicans who have bent the knee.
And last but not last. We should never forget the serious allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse against Trump, where juries ordered him to pay $5 Million while, “finding that he had defamed and sexually abused,” writer E. Jean Carroll. Contrary to what reddit might have you believe, the word is still out on whether he is John Doe 174, but you don’t have to go down that rabbit hole to already know that when it comes to the Republican nominee and the rest of his enablers…
They not like us.
-C