There’s a lot of “older” rappers that aren’t really with the times and you’ll see them releasing music that is explicitly complaining about “cancel culture,” even though they’re not victims of it and are still very successful. I used to be a pretty big Run the Jewels/Killer Mike fan, but the track “Talk’n That Shit!” from his 2023 album, Michael, is just generically mean and kinda hateful, with lyrics like
***** talk to me about that woke-ass shit (yeah)
Same ***** walkin’ on some broke-ass shit
You see, your words ain’t worth no money, I ain’t spoke back, bitch
All of you ***** hang together on some Brokeback shit
I’ll let you fill in the blanks or look up the lyrics yourself, because I’m not looking to catch a ban from posting rap lyrics, but needless to say it’s just “fuck you woke people, you’re all gay.” Like, there’s very little artistic merit to a song like that.
Dude used to write music that punched up, but then he went on NRA TV and talked about how he would kick his kids out of the house if they ever protested in favor of gun control legislation (he’s a huge 2nd Amendment advocate) and now he’s suddenly “anti-woke” because a bunch of people on Twitter told him he was out of touch and closed-minded and that if he really wanted to deliver this particular message, he probably could have selected a platform less comically heinous than one almost exclusively watched by alt-right lunatics. So he decided to prove them wrong by being even more out of touch and closed-minded.
Yeah, it’s the age old song and dance of “People on the left were mean to me for five minutes so now I’m going as hard as possible to the right for the rest of my life.” The person I feel the worst for in all this is El-P. Dude’s a decent guy and now his name is forever attached to a guy whose current ambition seems to be being Diet Kanye.