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Originally Posted by noisereductions
that may be part of it too yeah.
You hit the nail on the head about "overt" though. Of course Tribe and SY always had politics, it's just... a piece, not the whole.
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Yup. Art needs to be personal and inspired before it can successfully attempt to be global. When artists use politics (or "revolution" or "protest") as their only move, it feels like a gimmick or a branding tool. It's hideous and embarrassing.
Art is best when it reflects (be it through accuracy or abstraction) life and the human experience. Politics is a huge part of that experience, so music with no political element often falls short. But politics is not all of life. In fact, it's a very small piece of the actual sensory experience of living. For an artist to really appeal to me, they have to do something that somehow speaks to me, that I recognize. There's something in Kanye's voice and delivery that I very strongly recognize and identify with, and if that wasn't present in his music, his political songs wouldn't have as strong an impact on me.
When music is just "politics" with a beat, it's like... why bother? Just go be an organizer or a politician.
Very few people seem to get why music is important to the people that really love it. So, as is the case with film and literature and poetry, a vast majority of it totally sucks ass and is awful.