Rap/punk/metal band Body Count, responding to recent race riots across the US, released a radio edit of its song “No Lives Matter,” which apparently is a commentary on the confusion and acrimony over the name of the National Bolshevik style group Black Lives Matter.
According to front man Tracy Lauren “Ice T” Marrow:
…when I say ‘Black Lives Matter’ and you say ‘All Lives Matter’, that’s like if I was to say ‘Gay Lives Matter’ and you say ‘All Lives Matter’. If I said, ‘Women’s Lives Matter’ and you say ‘All Lives Matter’. You’re diluting what I’m saying. You’re diluting the issue. The issue isn’t about everybody, it’s about black lives, at the moment.
Label Century Media added its own reasons for the release:
As a company we felt it was necessary to release this single as a way to actively participate in the change that is needed to combat police brutality and racism. It is a first step in doing our part to inspire unity and transformation
Tags: body count, Crossover
Peak profundity.
Or another PR opportunity. Body Count never quite got the momentum it wanted: too much rap and too little riff for metalheads, too much punk and metal noise for everyone else.
Do you believe that Metal wouldâve come into being without blues and rock n roll? The best of death and black metal has nothing in common with both.
Yes, because there has always been popular music, and blues/country are entirely borrowed from European forms, just simplified into a product. Take an English/Scots drinking song, add a German waltz band percussion section, and play it in the color notes from the diatonic scale, and you have musical illiteracy promoted into a new genre. Then along come moronic white people who systematize it, develop it, and give it legitimacy. Metal was a revolt against all of that, a return to the primal caveman music where people were not afraid to connect with being alive.
obviously not, DUDE
But Brett Mr. Big Bad-ass Nihilist Stevens is Rage Against the Machine not proof that rap and metal can be combined to an extent even if RATM is more rock with some heavy metal elements? Does music have boundaries for you Mr. Stevens?
That’s the thing about assimilation, though… it defaults to the lowest common denominator. RATM became boring rock music and the rap and metal elements lost any of their interest. Now we have moronic pop music everywhere in which someone starts randomly rapping badly, and people think this is culture. It’s poo.
Moronic pop music-I blame that on The Beatles! I guess I’m a bad person for always disliking them!
The scary thing was that the Beatles were an upgrade in some ways to the very form-factor-oriented pop-rock of the 1950s. The blues standardized music from the more varied English/German/Scots/Irish drinking songs, and the early proto-prog rockers like the Beatles tried to make it a serious art form. Our mistake was taking them at face value because their pretentious wank was ultimately a total failure, ending up being unable to express anything but teenage confusion, lust, and self-pity.
Ice T should have never tried. A failed band from its inception.
True because the ingredients are paradoxical. Metal and rap don’t combine. Also: NYHC got there ahead of him.
There’s so much to be said here, but suffice to say it’s telling that voices like Akkebala are still banished from all discussion even (or maybe especially) now. Anyway, I heard Living Color have a new publicity protest anthem so set your stopwatch as I’m sure Mother’s Finest will be next (two formerly good hard rock bands who prove that Akkebala’s vision need not be limited to reggae, jazz and hip hop).
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ImSyJDPPIfs
The herd wants what the herd wants, and it gets sexual delight from ignoring the sane voices like Akkebala. He’s a real hero.
To euthanize, or not to euthanize…
In the case of 98% of humanity at this point, the right answer is to euthanize. We could probably make a new island with the bones. Someday it will be a premiere vacation destination.
One minute you’re bitching about Black Sabbath putting out BLM shirts, the next minute you’re promoting Body Count? Make up your mind!
These are here to cover interesting news, if we can. No advocacy necessarily implied beyond what is said in the text.
The only appealing thing about this song is, having seen some of Ice T’s recent social media posts on BLM, “the Jews” are the grand antagonists and oppressors of the poor and the underclasses of American society.
Ya gotta admit it – Brent Stephens is a straight shootin sonuvagun