MAY 2020
Welcome to the Monthly post, where I lay out everything you may have missed over the past 30 or so days, name an Album of the Month, a Song of the Month, and give a little “state of the union”. Come look at some other Monthly Posts to catch up on previous months. Thank all of you for reading, and happy listening!
Hip-hop is a genre that’s more in tune with the politics of the world that any other genre. It is a brand of music that draws directly from the struggles of minorities worldwide (with an obvious genesis in Black struggle) to create emotionally potent, raw, and uniquely charged music. To ignore the politics and humanity that is at the heart of hip-hop is to ignore hip-hop all together. Over the past few weeks we have seen the lines in the sand drawn, breaking points surpassed, and a calls for action spoken across the entire globe. There are certain ways of thinking that are, quite simply, antithetical to hip-hop; if things like organized, very likely violent, protest gives you pause, then you have not listened to this genre deeply enough. If you think that institutional racism is “a gray area”, then you have not listened to what people like Ice-T, Public Enemy, and N.W.A. have been telling you for over 30 years. If your response to the basic assertion that a Black life in this world matters is that “all lives matter”, then you need to know that hip-hop will not afford you a space.
I am a white man. My privilege, while I’ll never be able to understand it in it’s entirety, is something that I am at least aware of every day. I live in Oklahoma, a place where being aware of the plights of others (or, more realistically, giving a shit about the plights of others) is a rare quality. But no matter where you live, how Red your state is, how conservative your country is, the responsibility is on me, an people like me, to speak out, show out, be active, donate, bring attention, and advocate directly for the Black community. I understand that I am a white guy in a community built off of the continued legacy of Black heroes, and I will always do my best here on Tha Soup Dude’s Kitchen to work towards continuing the empowerment of future Black heroes.
Rest in Peace to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Philando Castille, Laquan McDonald, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin… this won’t end without an all out assault upon the systems and foundation that perpetuates these atrocities, and over the past couple weeks I’ve seen some amazing shows of character and revolutionary nature. Time will tell how effective these events will be, but it is up to everyone with privilege to continue to support and continue the pressure; not in the least because it’s the least we can do for a community that, among many, many things, has given us this amazing genre that has enriched out lives into something much greater, but because the Black community is a community of human beings that are under attack by corruption and a targeted system of oppression, and it is our duty to do so as a fellow human beings.
Please check out my banner at the top of the page, a link to ActBlue. This one source takes a donation and spreads it across over 70 mutual aid funds to help those who have been wrongfully incarcerated during these turbulent times (and from past injustices) and gives them a chance to fight whatever case they have on their feet. Please consider donating to this organization, or at the very least do your own research to find one that speaks to you the most. Thank you.
————————————————
Ka
Wishing For A Hero (Feat. BJ the Chicago Kid)
Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music
————————————————
WEEKLY FIXES
Weekly Fix #18 ('20) & Week #18 ('20) Playlists (with Ka’s Descendants of Cain and Drake’s Dark Lane Demo Tapes)
Weekly Fix #19 ('20) & Week #19 ('20) Playlists (with Chris Brown & Young Thug’s Slime&B and NAV’s Good Intentions)
Weekly Fix #20 ('20) & Week #20 ('20) Playlists (with Big Ghost LTD & Conway the Machine’s No One Mourns The Wicked and Eto’s The Beauty of It)
Weekly Fix #21 ('20) & Week #21 ('20) Playlists (with Gunna’s WUNNA and al.divino & Estee Nack’s IMMORTALKOMBAT)
Weekly Fix #22 ('20) & Week #22 ('20) Playlists (with Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist’s Alfredo and Preservation’s Eastern Medicine, Western Illness)
————————————————
WRITE-UPS
Ka - Descendants of Cain [2020]
Domo Genesis & The Alchemist - No Idols [2020]
————————————————
This next month will have a couple of projects I’ve been looking forward to. We’ve already seen Run the Jewels and Armand Hammer, but we still have Pop Smoke’s posthumous album, MIKE, RMR, and Rome Streetz to look forward to on the music front. Check out my Upcoming Heat page to keep up with it yourself.
I’d say more, but, honestly, I’m just going to leave it like this. The world is very bleak at the moment, but seeing the community rise up and support each other like it has is most definitely a source of inspiration and hope. Let’s direct that energy into some real, lasting change. Thank you all for having a sense of humanity, a quality that it seems like fewer and fewer people have the capacity to exert.
And, like I said up in the Intro, please consider donating to ActBlue. If you click on the announcement bar at the top of the page (and at the top of every page on TSDK), it will take you directly to a source where you can give. Thank you.
