Redbone by Childish Gambino

Before we begin analyzing the song, we must find the meaning for the word “Redbone” and its multiple definitions. As a slang term, “redbone” distinguishes a lighter-skinned black person of mixed race. Redbone, the correct terminology, is a black person who has red undertones in their hair and skin. Usually light or light caramel but not always. They just have reddish hair and skin. Now it’s used to describe a look that occurs in African Americans. Each culture has their own term for this look. In Cuba its: ‘Haba’ or ‘mulatto’. Usually a light complexion. However, the term today, is used in Black culture for any light, super high yellow girl/woman, mulatto looking woman who is Black.

An example to help you put a clearer mental picture would be Beyoncé. She utilizes her image immensely in her visual album Lemonade. 

 

On a surface level “Redbone” is about paranoia and infidelity in a relationship. It speaks about loving a woman, a redbone one to be specific. However, there can be read to be more than just a scandalous love affair going on.

The song soundtracks the opening credits of Jordan Peele's horror film Get Out. Speaking to HipHopDX, Peele explained why he chose the Childish Gambino track for his movie: "Well, first of all, I love the 'Stay Woke' [lyric] - that's what this movie is about," he said. "I wanted to make sure that this movie satisfied the black horror movie audience's need for characters to be smart and do things that intelligent and observant people would do." 

What comes to my mind with this song taking it from the context of the film, is that it is speaking about how it feels to be a young black male, fitting into stereotypes such as the line, “My peanut butter chocolate cake with Kool-Aid”. However, it is the main stanza which jumps out at me if I think of the song in the context of race and being a young black male in America.

Ooh, now stay woke

Niggas creepin’

Now don’t you close your eyes

Too late

You wanna make it right, but now it’s too

Late

Here the lyrics can be interpreted as the marginalized group in society (African-Americans) must stay aware and always alert of their social standing; but also, there is a reference being made to the white-nationalist mindset. The mind set that now people are starting to apologize for the wrong doing that was forced upon a group of people, saying sorry for slavery, division of the social classes, and disparity created amongst the supposed land of the free. At this point it is too late to be saying these things to people which have been attacked by police brutality, given unfair opportunities in education, and have a higher incarceration rate than any other group. You can try all you want to make a wrong a right, but sometimes that time for apologies is way past due.

 It is with this observation that Redbone suddenly can be seen under a completely different lens, which sheds light on how popular artists such as Childish Gambino are able to incorporate hot social topics into their music. 

Brown Sugar by The Rolling Stones

I personally am a huge fan of classic rock, and The Rolling Stones sit high on my list of best rock bands ever. Their song “Brown Sugar” is incredibly catchy and fun to jam out to in the car, until you realize what Mick Jagger is singing about. 

The lyric is about slaves from Africa who were sold in New Orleans and raped by their white masters. The subject matter is quite serious, but the way the song is structured, it comes off as a fun rocker about a white guy having sex with a black girl.

Mick Jagger was the writer for the lyrics. According to Bill Wyman (Rolling Stones bass guitarist), it was partially inspired by a black backup singer named Claudia Lennear, who was one of Ike Turner's Ikettes. She and Jagger met when The Stones toured with Turner in 1969. American-born singer Marsha Hunt is also sometimes cited as the inspiration for the song. She and Jagger met when she was a member of the cast in the London production of the musical Hair, and their relationship, a closely guarded secret until 1972, resulted in a daughter named Karis.

The other perspective has to do with many of the band members drug problem during their time as musicians. According to the book Up And Down With The Rolling Stones by Tony Sanchez, all the slavery and whipping is a double meaning for the perils of being "mastered" by Brown Heroin, or "Brown Sugar." The drug cooks brown in a spoon.

Some symbolic background knowledge on what brown sugar represents needs to be explained. In 327 BC Alexander the Great came across the cultivation of sugarcane in India. From this reed, a dark brown sugar was extracted from the cane by chewing and sucking. Some of this "sweet reed" was sent back to Athens. This was the first time a European had come across sugar. (From the book Food for Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World by Ed Pearce). From then on sugar cane became a source of wealth all over the world, eventually finding itself in the New World. But along with the sweet sugar cane came the wretched taste of slavery. Growing sugar cane was a major cash crop and ruled islands in the Caribbean as well as the South in the United States. 

The Caribbean during this time was controlled by Great Britain, the Dutch, French, and Spanish. It is this symbol of white-European colonialist rampaging land that is not theirs in which “Brown Sugar” is getting at. The expanding power of sugarcane caused for so much social injustice and inhumane treatment of African slaves.

 It’s ironic since The Rolling Stones are an English band (former colonizers) and their band was at the time forming the so called “British Invasion” along with The Beatles, where America was embracing the rebellious rock-and-roll music into their culture. 

DNA. by Kendrick Lamar

The music Video: Kendrick Lamar's video for DNA is the second video off his new album, "DAMN." The music video gained over 7 million views in less than 24 hours. The video stars Don Cheadle; the actor lip syncs to Kendrick's first verse in the piece. Commenters on Reddit and YouTube have speculated the symbolism behind the video. Many are alluding to Kendrick's messages of the complexity of the black experience in America. Others are picking up ties to the movie, "The Day The Earth Stood Still" starring Keanu Reeves.

In the music video, the scene starts out with Kendrick Lamar chained to a metal chair, set up at what appears to be an interrogation table. A black man in a suit, an agent of some sort, enters the room and starts probing at Kendrick and says, “Do you even know what DNA stands for? Dead Nigger Association”. There is a sort of lie detector machine on the table which begins to run wild with the sound of a news broadcast talking about police brutality. That is when the very beginning of the song begins to play.

What is interesting with the music video is when Don Cheadle is lip syncing to the first verse of the song, but it is portrayed as an argument/conversation between himself and Kendrick. Cheadle speaks on being raised in poverty, but then Kendrick argues back how he sees how such a man was “born outside a jelly fish” and has no backbone. One could decipher that these two men are arguing about their different opinions on being black males in America, and how their experiences have changed their outlooks on life. Their differences give the audience two unique views which are being seen through the black perspective, something not everyone can experience.

Another interpretation of this however is that Cheadle is representing not only power, but more specifically the scenario when blacks take on the role of being white. His argument could therefore be the white argument against the black. Overall the scene is a power struggle, one which relates back to the flaws within the justice system, as well as a commentary on how black people are perceived within American society. 

The Lyrics: Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics are unabashedly violent, and much of this violence is tied directly to race. When Kendrick says “You ain’t shit without a body on your belt” we see Kendrick painting violence as a necessity for respect. Moreover, Kendrick goes so far as to tie violence to race when he says that “Sex, money, murder – our DNA”. Kendrick Lamar paints himself as being violent due to his intrinsic code.

DNA can now be interpreted as not only an abbreviation of deoxyribonucleic acid but also as “dead nigger association”. Bringing dead nigger association and genetics together suggests that genetics are the explanation for black violence. The news clip in which can be heard in the music video is that of Geraldo Rivera speaking on Fox News. Most notably, Geraldo says right in the middle of the song that “hip hop has done more damage to young African-Americans than racism in recent years”. This insane line from Rivera really helps put the song into perspective. (Look out for a future post with the video clip from Fox News). 

The ending scene of the music video is of Kendrick standing with a group of young black males in a neighborhood street corner. One of them begins to follow the camera, aggressively sauntering towards it until he punches the camera out with the last words of the song saying, “Real niggah inside my DNA, ain’t no hoe inside my… DNA” with DNA being said in an automated voice message that sounds like a white woman. Kendrick’s masterpiece is showcasing how black people are painted as at fault for things such as black on black crime rate, all through his music. 

Geraldo Rivera rips Kendrick Lamar's BET Award set

Brother Louie by Hot Chocolate and Stories

The song “Brother Louie” was originally recorded in England by Hot Chocolate where it reached the top 10. It was covered by The Stories in the US where it reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart.

Hot Chocolate was an interracial (four black members, two white) group from London who had a hit in 1975 with "You Sexy Thing." Written by their lead singer Errol Brown and bass player Tony Wilson, "Brother Louie" is about a romance between a white man and a black woman.

Errol Brown was born in Jamaica and raised by a single mother, who moved him to England when he was young. He told Melody Maker that this song was inspired by real-life experience. "That comes from early dating in a place where there's mostly white people," he said. "That was fine for us because we grew up and rubbed shoulders with other nationalities, so it wasn't a heavy thing. But in those days a lot of white parents never had anything to do with black people. It was understandable – they just didn't know what was going on, apart from what they read in books or saw on TV: jungle scenes."

The Hot Chocolate version of this song didn't gain any traction in the United States, possibly because of the subject matter. The spoken sections portraying the parents' reactions to the interracial couple were rather graphic, using the epithets "Honky" and "Spook," which was enough to scare many radio stations away. About six months after Hot Chocolate's version was issued, the New York City group Stories recorded the song and released it as a single. Their version, which left out the spoken parts and a verse where Louie meets the girl's parents, featured a more pronounced string section and proved much more palatable to American listeners, and went to #1 in the US in August 1973. It was the only hit for Stories.

The lyrics within the song clearly speak about society's disapproval of interracial relationships, especially between a white man and a black woman:

She was black as the night;

Louie was whiter than white

Danger, danger when you taste brown sugar

Louie fell in love overnight

It is interesting to see how also the song makes the reference to brown sugar, relating us back to The Rolling Stones song “Brown Sugar” and the symbolism between sugar cane, slavery, and abuse of the female black body. The song covers the topic of how the black woman is a temptress, seductive, and able to be taken advantage of. It is always the typical story of the white male falling for the black woman that is portrayed in novels and poetry, mainly because it was common for the white male slaveowners to have sexual relations with their female slaves to display power and ownership.

In this song’s context however, there is a sense of sympathy and pity for Louie, because he appears to truly care for his black lover and is now just realizing the hardship they both must face to be accepted as a couple by society.  For once the white individual is feeling the pressure of being marginalized and judged due to the color of skin, something which Louie has perhaps never dealt with before.