worst protest song/political song to place in the Pazz & Jop singles poll

the other reason i think it was pointless is from the political standpoint as well as the pop standpoint - as a political statement, it didn't come close to kanye's original outburst, despite (or because) kanye didn't follow it up. bush himself called kanye's comment the worst moment of his presidency. beyond a few rock critics, barely anyone noticed and certainly no one remembers the legendary ko's contribution to the discourse. it came off like the legendary ko was trying to make an awkward quasi-political act by kanye into a Proper Political Thing, but it had zero impact from that point of view.

The Legendary KO track isn't great but come on there are at least two songs on here that are worse, Mosh and the Bright Eyes one.

The Stop The Violence Movement - "Self Destruction" (#20, 1989)

Never heard this, any good?

When the president talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women’s rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God say ever change his mind
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs. the ghetto's broke
No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't
Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke
That's what God recommends

When the president talks to God
Do they drink near beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess god just calls a spade a spade
When the president talks to God

When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bullshit
When the president talks to God?

I doubt it

I doubt it

I mean, honestly.

oh yeah, the bright eyes one is definitely worse. bright eyes, generally, was the worst.

um, never heard it, but the lyrics aren't ... um...

I'd say "not awful", but

I dunno maybe the version of it is bad and you'd like it more if Jay-Z had done it.

That sounds 'wrong', I mean that thesedays people 'expect' political expression to sound like *this*, and not like *that*...

haha um reading the lyrics has made me remember how much i GENUINELY LIKE 'when the president talks to god'.

i was thinking 'yup that's one of those embarrassing political conor oberst songs that i don't even enjoy being embarrassed by' BUT NO

his little trembling voice! "I guess God just calls a spade a spade"!

also iirc it was an itunes-only thing at a time when that didn't feel like an official release.

mattdc, re: self destruction, no it's not much good, & i never want to listen to it. mc lyte kills it tho. the west coast equivalent that symsymsym posted upthread is far superior. followed it up with a heavily underrated post too imo :D

good work trying to troll aero into posting again by bashing the bright eyes #

Sometime (former?) ILX'er swoods and I have been trading off our Top 100s on Facebook; I had Legendary K.O. at #52, and put it at #2 on my 2005 year-end. In the annals of in-the-moment political outrage, I rank it with "Ohio," the Mothers' "Trouble Every Day," and not a whole lot else.

Perfectly valid to think it's a lousy record, but I've got to take issue with a couple of specific complaints raised above. I don't think it matters a bit whether Legendary K.O. had a "long and rewarding career"; to make that argument, you're essentially writing off Rob Base, ? & the Mysterians, and every other great one-shot ever. (I know, neither Base nor ? was technically a one-hit artist--you know what I mean.) Saying everything you ever had to say on one record and then having the good sense to disappear yourself can be a good thing.

Also: "beyond a few rock critics, barely anyone noticed and certainly no one remembers the legendary ko's contribution to the discourse." Is this true? I don't know--I remember "George Bush..." as being kind of an internet sensation ("viral," if you will) when it first appeared. Did George Bush take notice of it the way he did Kayne West's original comment? No--I'm quite sure he never heard Legendary K.O.'s record. Just like I'm quite sure Nixon never heard "Ambulance Blues" or "Smiling Faces Sometimes"--it doesn't make them any less brilliant in my eyes. I'm even tempted to make the opposite argument, that there's something especially inspiring about a voice-in-the-wilderness record that no one hears, but I won't go that route either. Ultimately, a song stands or falls on its own merits.

Kayne's aside about Bush was a fantastic, completely spontaneous moment. His actual statement was relatively measured; he accused Bush of indifference. By changing "doesn't care about" to "doesn't like," Legendary K.O. took West's charge into the realm of incendiary recklessness. Probably quite unfair, but it makes the record that much more compelling to me. I also think it's ingenious that they were able to use one of Kayne's own songs as their source material. Ditto managing to work "Connecticut" into the mix, which reminds me of Young MC's use of "opportunistic"--I think you've got to be pretty adroit to get by with such words. And best of all for me, "Five damn days, five long days/And at the end of the fifth, he walkin' in like 'Hey'."

I have no idea what Kayne West thought of "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People," but I don't recall any kind of legal injunctions or anything to get the record pulled. My guess is that he was okay with it, and maybe even thought it was as great as I do.

when another relatively unknown rapper did a politically minded mixtape version of another Kanye song the same year (Lupe Fiasco's blood diamond-themed version of "Diamonds"), Kanye had him guest on his album and helped launch the guy's mainstream career, so I'm guessing if Kanye was at all impressed by The Legendary K.O. we would've known by now.

I am working hard on learning to spell Kanye West's name correctly. I've got the "West" part down cold.

Just call him "west" from now on, that won't confuse people.

I sincerely don't believe I'm exaggerating at all when I saw that literally thousands of no-name MCs are rapping over beats from from popular songs and making tracks that are at least half the time as good or better than "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" every single day. there is absolutely nothing exceptional about that song except that if you were desperate for anti-Bush rap in 2005 you might've kidded yourself into thinking it's remotely as good as "Gold Digger."

er "say" not "saw"

xpost: I was just speculating on what West (thanks!) thought of the record. Trying to be consistent, it really doesn't affect my own feelings about the record one way or the other.

So I just kidded myself into liking the record? Man, I'm such a dupe. I didn't even realize I was desperate for anti-Bush rap at the time--hadn't consciously thought about such a thing once, but it must have there somewhere in the deeper recesses of my mind.

I don't know man, I just literally cannot fathom any other reason to hold this song in such high esteem beyond having a fist-pumping "right on!" reaction to the topic, which was the point of grouping these particular songs together for this thread.

i've always assumed people spelling his name as "kayne" must be doing it as some sort of joke, because i've seen it so much over the years

clemenza OTM. some dude's contempt is way OTT. I think in the days after Katrina it was acceptable to be looking for an anti-Bush rap and OK to enjoy one that's quick, witty and measured and it's incredibly obtuse not to accept that subject matter and circumstance can elevate a record above thousands of other no-name rappers freestyling over hit beats.

of course subject matter and circumstance can elevate a record; sometimes they also overshadow the actual music.

The guy is just dull as dishwater as a rapper and there's not a single hot line in the song imo. You say it's "perfectly valid to think it's a lousy record," but that all other conclusions I draw from that are too far; if such a lousy record gets that much praise why shouldn't I think aloud about why?

If you're saying #16 is too high on P&J, sure, I agree, and it's because of the phenomenon you're talking about, but I don't see why it's so worthless and terrible. Most of the other songs here have at least one line that makes me bite my fist with embarrassment - at worst this is solid.

Xpost Think it had more to do with lumping all who like it under an unflattering umbrella

For what it's worth, I don't think "George Bush don't like black people"; West's charge of indifference was much closer to the truth, I'd say. So I'm not sure that I exactly had what you call a fist-pumping, right-on reaction to the record. I found (and continue to find) it a compelling song. That 50 million rappers may have been out there trying to do the same thing with West's comment doesn't matter a bit to me. I haven't heard those records; if I ever hear one that's better than Legendary K.O.'s, I'll be happy.

I think the Kanye misspelling is just a case of "kay" being a natural thing for your fingers to want to type, and "kan" not being so natural.

Maybe an interesting question to pose re: the subject of the thread is, given that musical taste is subjective anyway, why shouldn't a listener enjoy a record in part for its political content? I mean, there are classic records I disagree with and awful ones I agree with, but most of the time it's not that simple. There's no doubt I like the Legendary KO record more than if the same rapper was rapping about something else over the same beat but so what? Don't all these factors feed into your enjoyment of a record?

It's this idea that "quality" is somehow sacrosanct and impervious to any other considerations, like when I hear people saying they don't care what race/class/gender a musician is as long as the music is good when race/class/gender may all play a part in whether it's good and what kind of good it is.

if such a lousy record gets that much praise why shouldn't I think aloud about why?

Sorry, missed that. I didn't mean it wasn't valid for you to voice your objections--I'd never say anything like that. I just meant I disagreed with the validity of your objections.

I ain't sayin' he's a gold-digger, but he ain't messin' with no broke niggas

cmon dude that's corny...what do those two lines have to do at all with what went on in New Orleans? How is the political content not clumsily superimposed onto the original 'Gold Digger' single?

Maybe an interesting question to pose re: the subject of the thread is, given that musical taste is subjective anyway, why shouldn't a listener enjoy a record in part for its political content? I mean, there are classic records I disagree with and awful ones I agree with, but most of the time it's not that simple. There's no doubt I like the Legendary KO record more than if the same rapper was rapping about something else over the same beat but so what? Don't all these factors feed into your enjoyment of a record?

It's this idea that "quality" is somehow sacrosanct and impervious to any other considerations, like when I hear people saying they don't care what race/class/gender a musician is as long as the music is good when race/class/gender may all play a part in whether it's good and what kind of good it is.

― I've been dancing since 9 and I'm tired and hungry (Dorianlynskey), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 8:53 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

obviously there will always be differences of opinion and quality isn't some kind of objectively measured criteria. but I believe there is a widespread impulse among music critics to inflate the enjoyability of a piece of music if it carries some kind of message or 'importance' that appeals to them or the artist's background is exciting to write about, and songs like the ones listed in this poll are ones that set off my bullshit detector for that kind of thing pretty hardcore.

saying "the political is clumsily superimposed onto 'Gold Digger'" is like arguing that the food content is clumsily superimposed into a Weird Al song

"Eat It is brilliant, my #2 song of 1984."

Yankovic labors over making the new lyrics fit the meter and rhyme scheme of the original way more than LKO or most other mixtape rappers using industry beats.

Someone in another EOY list thread talked about the "yearbook" aspect - you pick your favourite songs, sure, but also maybe a couple that represent the year to you and will remind you of it. Topical songs are bound to benefit from that. It's not bullshit unless you believe that it's possible for everyone to construct a list based on nothing except pure "enjoyability". I think other factors - cultural ubiquity, a dramatic back story, an aura of artistic "importance" - always enter into it.

haha i'm pretty sure i was the person that introduced the word 'yearbook' in that thread.

I wz trolling Whiney more than anything else dorian--sorry...

It's this idea that "quality" is somehow sacrosanct and impervious to any other considerations, like when I hear people saying they don't care what race/class/gender a musician is as long as the music is good when race/class/gender may all play a part in whether it's good and what kind of good it is.

― I've been dancing since 9 and I'm tired and hungry (Dorianlynskey), Tuesday, January 25, 2011 8:53 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i assume you dont mean this but this paragraph just reads as 'its good because hes black'

Sigh. If you honestly think it reads that way, then it's not even worth explaining what I mean.

i mean i get that your pt was 'why shouldnt politics enter into it' but that was just a weird example to use considering the circumstances. sorry if bringing that up complicates this argument it just struck me as weird

all that said its not a politically nuanced or interesting track, its just a straight retelling of what happened that day punctuated with 'george bush doesnt like black people' chorus. its the kind of condescending back-patting politics that puts me off from generalist critics trying to engage w/ rap music. 'why cant more rap be like legendary ko'

its the kind of condescending back-patting politics that puts me off from generalist critics trying to engage w/ rap music. 'why cant more rap be like legendary ko'

I'm at work and posting on the run, but now I'm a generalist critic trying to engage with rap music? I don't know why some of you guys always feel the need to start reading into why people like what they like.

not being able to spell Kanye was a tipoff

i thought it was understood that politics was the reason we liked this, then

xpost to deej. The idea of "quality" distinct from other considerations reminded of recent debates in the UK about the dominance of the affluent middle classes in rock and comedy - one response you always get if you raise this is "It doesn't matter as long as it's good," which ignores the fact that there are different kinds of good and that if an artform becomes too socially homogenous then you miss out on some of them. It's a related point - ie, sociopolitical factors do enter into how music is made and heard - but not the same as the specific Legendary KO point. Though for someone who often complains about having your arguments misread until they're ass-backwards, you're not allergic to it yourself.

You're always complaining about generalist critics. Well guess what? Hip hop isn't some arcane specialism, it's part of the general cultural conversation, and political hip hop has been given special treatment by critics since The Message so get over it. I also think it's weird to single out Legendary KO - a record that was specific, timely and recorded by people who were seeing Katrina refugees every day in shelters in Houston - as "condescending and backpatting". It's not Arrested fucking Development.

The only trend I do not like in rap right now is the message rap. I consider the message rap the equivalent of what strings were to rock 'n' roll in the late '50s - a capitulation to the adult norm who can't accept the music on its own terms. The people who considered "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Annie Had a Baby" - as the pinnacles of '50s R&B now are super uptight over the - in quotes - hotel/motel lyrics of rap. Rap is definitely as true to the essence of rock 'n roll as anything that's out there today.

* Aaron Fuchs quoted by David Toop (1991). Rap Attack 2, p.120. New York: Serpent's Tail. ISBN 1852422432.

this is music that congratulates your existing political biases while engaging no novel aesthetic ones. and im not trying to erect some kind of gatekeeper bunker mentality around rap music, but encourage people who think legendary ko is great to engage w/ us about rap music more often & try to understand the critical framework we're using on the genre if theyre going to engage in rap crit (even if they plan on rejecting that framework ultimately)

I mean, i def agree 100% percent with deej that the long rock critic tradition of pandering to message-rap is NAGL of the highest order; but rap dudes has a tradition of completely dismissing the stuff which is also NAGL.

Like seriously I know it got the accolades that Stunts Blunts And Hip Hop prolly deserved, but the first Arrested Development album is dope and fuiud

Some dud: I misspell lots of words. Don't read too much into my typos and misspellings.

i know, couldn't resist the easy joke, sorry bro

xpost. Try making fewer condescending assumptions about what people listen to and know about. I don't know who you're referring to but I don't need any lessons in hip hop comprehension, thanks. I like that Toop quote a lot but for me it's not either/or - I like political lyrics and I like meaningless ones and I like bits of everything in between.

And again, I don't think you can say a record released less than a week after a major news event pandering to existing biases - it was a gut reaction. Would it have been more "novel" of them to write a song in praise of FEMA?

Also, I think the context of a topical message rap in 2005 is very different from the period Toop was referring to - there was a lot of weak, worthy stuff following Public Enemy but in 2005 there wasn't really a bandwagon to jump so Legendary KO did have the force of novelty.

its not a 'condescending assumption' i just never see you talking in any ilx rap threads so