40 Preview - Hip Hoprisy (This Is America / McCain Funeral)
For every episode of Minion Death Cult, visit Patreon.com/miniondeathcult & get a private feed of weekly premium episodes in your podcast app. This week the Cult covers the plethora of bad takes around the music video for Childish Gambino's "This Is America," including such gems as: "Black people care about police shootings but dont care when their friend kills 5 people over an argument." and "How come this music video has to be from a black person's perspective?" also: We cover the single most animating incident on the right wing this week: John McCain denying Donald Trump an invite to his own funeral. It's basically 300 comments of Deplorables telling John McCain, decorated POW, to burn in hell.
Yeah, the premium episode is like the wet start you do in your fighter jet to show off your moves that end up incinerating 134 of your fellow shipmates.
Jesus.
And streamline you toward a career in politics.
That's the typical path.
That happened on a Thursday, I think.
Yeah, that's what, um, that's what they call that day.
It's, uh... Black Thursday.
Bloody Thursday.
That's it.
Yeah.
Yeah, so today, today we're talking about Childish Gambino, uh, This Is America, and all the, uh, very interesting, well, just the interesting video itself, and, uh, the interesting...
Array of reactions to it.
It set the internet afire.
There is an entire economy right now built around explaining this music video.
Yeah, the ads in those comments section, like on the sidebars of those comment boards.
Oh, were there?
No, those are like the part of the economy.
That's how the money's getting generated.
Sure.
I'm just talking about the like 3,000 freelance writers doing explainers for Vox and Huffington Post and I don't know, The Atlantic.
Think piece is titled, This is America?
Yeah, question mark.
Yeah, or this is America, and then like this is in italics.
Yep.
Do you guys ever go to museums?
Ever?
Yeah, I just went to the La Brea Tar Pits.
You know, interestingly enough, they're not actual tar pits.
They're more like asphalt seeps.
They're like hard pits.
Yeah, true, dude.
That's what I was gonna say.
Were you?
So what about museums?
Well, I mean, you know when you go to museums, right?
When you're looking at a piece of, you know, like a painting or something, and it's like abstract art or something, you have to like talk to everybody around you in the museum about it.
And like say, hey, hey, hey, you know this Basquiat here, look at blah, blah, blah and have a huge take and you gotta tell everybody, right?
Well, I mean, I tend to go to museums with like lady friends and sometimes like they just need a different perspective and I need to explain to them in a lot of detail about what's going on in the art piece.
That's fine!
But, no, what I'm talking about- That's what I do.
What I'm talking about is, like, it's a metaphor for all these fucking, like, armchair fucking journalists typing on these fucking blogs saying their piece about this, uh, about the music video.
And it's art, and it's, you know, maybe keep your views on it a little quieter, you know?
Well I like, so my experience going to, keep your views on it quieter, we're about to do a whole episode on this baby.
Yeah.
Well, but I'm saying like, but you know what I mean.
We're us though.
But we're gonna be examining people.
Right.
Them picking apart.
That's what they say, they say small minds talk about art, great minds talk about people.
Yeah, right.
That's how that saying goes.
Precisely.
No, I do enjoy When I go to the museum, like an art museum, I like to have those headphones in that give you a tour of the art.
And it's like standing in front of this Basquiat.
Is that what you said?
Yeah, Basquiat.
Jean-Michel Basquiat.
And it explains the hues and the shadows or whatever.
And that's what I did for this music video.
I muted it.
I muted it and then I listened to a salon staff writer explain to me why it was good in my headphones while I watched it on mute.
That's the way everybody should watch this video first, so I can shape an opinion on it.
It's to the point where there's articles on the articles.
Well, that's what we are, right?
That's where we are.
Yeah, that's us.
We are the art.
Yeah, because we're in a paper circulatory.
So let's just go around real quick and say whether you liked it or whether you loved it.
Okay.
Tony?
I'm gonna pick C. Want more of it.
Oh, damn.
Oh, damn.
No, I think it's cool.
It's a good piece of art, and the song is good, and it has its whole commentary.
It's causing conversations, which is rad.
At work, people want to be like, hey, you watched the video this weekend, right?
You watched it?
Everybody at work, same.
You did your homework, right?
That was the conversation.
It was cool.
Everybody was very into it.
Well, because we watched it Sunday night.
Yeah.
You brought it in, Tony.
And I think I had seen like a screenshot.
I had seen like a screenshot of Donald Glover shooting somebody in the back of the head and a headline of it, you know.
And I don't look at something until I see at least like three headlines about it.
Yeah.
So then you brought it in.
Actually, but just for the record, Matt showed it to me earlier that day.
Okay.
Yeah, I saw it on... Hey, good job, man.
Oh, I'm so cool.
I'm so, like, clued in to, like, you know, the urban community.
Nah, I'm just kidding.
You're just a big fan of Vevo.
Yeah, just a big Vevo fan.
I've refreshed that... You subscribe.
You get notifications for Vevo.
Yeah, I refresh it often.
You know, I refresh Vevo homepage all the time.
I want to say though, this isn't the Donald Glover Vevo account that uploaded it.
It's just Donald Glover, which I find really insulting.
Yeah, it's now the Donald Glover, not Charles Gambino.
Um, let me say first before I say whether I liked it or loved it is when I said, you know, people shouldn't talk about this.
People should talk about it.
Good art makes people talk about, talk, talk about it.
So, but what I'm saying is like, if you have some like hot take on like what like, like child is trying to say here, like maybe keep it to yourself.
You should just play it over Matt whenever he talks.
Yeah, do that.
I'm super offended, but no, I like this a lot.
Loved it.
Yeah, I was fascinated by it.
It's fucking beautifully choreographed.
The cinematography is amazing.
The sound design is crazy, the gunshots and the screams and all that is nuts.
It's very shocking, you know, intentionally so.
The beat is fucking great, like the verse beat is so good.
There's like super eerie parts and not just the shocking parts with the gun violence, but like The, uh, we were talking about before we started recording, just the pan, where it pans up to the rafters and you see- It's the first cut, kind of, you know what I mean?
What?
I think it's the first cut from, like, one segment to the next segment, kind of.
Uh, it just, it pans up to the rafters, shows, like, kind of a balcony type thing where there's, like, four kids wearing bandanas and just filming.
The action underneath them and they're all panning to the right as the camera pans across them and there's like this eerie string part that hits right it right at that part.
It's just like real real mood right there.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's cool.
There's like there's at least like four different like contemporary rappers ad-libs on it, too.
You got like Block Boy JB doing ad-libs on it.
You got 21 Savage doing ad-libs.
You got the Migos on there.
I think two of them and then you got Young Thug, I think.
Maybe help he did like probably half the ad-libs on this song and then at the end he does a little like a little like I don't know what he's called a Segway little Segway at the end of the of the yeah He's got a little thing singing about the the genius the genius comm annotation for this That song is fascinating.
Especially for me, who I don't know all the references to other hip-hop artists and other ideas in hip-hop, and just reading about it was a very rewarding experience for me personally.
Especially since you usually go on Genius to look at shitty songs.
That's a very good point.
Yeah.
Donald Glover, his performance, his visual performance in this.
We're looking at a particular moment in the music video and he's just, he's a wild dude.
He's a great performer.
I think this is like the famous still from it right here.
You have it paused on that minute or second 40 of the official video.
Just beautiful boy, just sitting there with this big old funny grin.
I don't know what the hell he's doing.
He's doing like a sneer, a growl.
He is he is just like the end-all be-all of like of like Hollywood folks Um, so one thing I think is funny about this is, hot take, I can't, kind of can't stand the vast majority of this performance interpretive dance thing people do.
Like a lot of it I see on like Instagram, which is real cringe, and it's real hard, and I know it's like their art, it just doesn't translate to me.
Sure.
But there's that like, there's that like 5% of it that I'm like, man that fucking, that kind of moves me.
And his like, physical expressions, his face the whole time is, the way he like, He flexes his muscles in a weird, like, strenuous way.
He's doing this performance interpretive dance thing that I usually can't stand, but it's done so well.
The difference for me, I know exactly what you're saying, because, uh, yeah, I'm normally, like, very anti, uh, just performance in general.
You know?
Don't like performing.
It's just weird.
I don't like seeing people perform in front of me.
No.
But I think the difference here is that it's a very self-aware performance.
It's like over the top and it's very... You know, you start watching them.
If you haven't read anything about this video and you just start watching it, you think he's like joking.
You think it's like a comical routine that he's doing and then just all this shit starts piling up throughout and you're like, okay, no, this is a weird like meta commentary on our reactions to violence and
It's it's a great yeah, it's it's a it's a cool You know and even just the normal court than quote normal choreography where he's just dancing with the group of kids is amazing awesome He like important to speak on the choreography real quick again He like interpret he like in integrates all these different regional dances in it like again the Memphis little I don't know what they call black boys dance, but y'all seen it on fucking Instagram and shit and He does that dance, he does a little Migos type of Atlanta shit.
It's cool, man.
The whole thing is great and the song is so fucking cool.
Can't wait to hear his new album.
I'm really excited to see a video of a group of people listening to the song doing the dances to it.
I'm excited to see that.
It's gonna happen.
Hell yeah.
Hell yeah.
Because it is this whole like...
Sick.
He does a really good job at really talking about hip hop culture at the moment.
He does a good job at that.
But yes, there are a lot of takes from this whole thing.
Just to kind of like crush through a couple.
Just to get them out of the way.
I am a proud participator in White Genocide.
Yeah, man.
You're the DJ in our White Genocide band, dude.
I'm not necessarily the person to talk about that take on the fact that he does have a white partner and how people's views on that.
I'm not going to talk about that, but it is out there and it's an interesting conversation.
Yeah, it's a big take.
It's a big deal right now.
Not a conversation to be taken lightly.
At all.
So we probably shouldn't talk about it.
Yeah, like I said, unfortunately, you know, I got what you would call a dog in the fight, if you know what I mean.
Oh, dude.
You're golden, homie.
But that was funny.
And then also, the funny, weird lore that's already happened about the video.
Oh, God.
You know, things like, there's a lot of cool things going on.
There's a lot of cameos that are kind of interesting.
Well, SZA, that's really... Oh, she's in it?
Yeah.
She's sitting on the hood of a car at the end.
Real like casually.
Not even a big deal.
And then the rumor about it being Trayvon Martin's dad that was out of nowhere that people were like running with.
So the guy with the bag on his head that gets shot.
First kill in the music video.
Spoiler alert.
Yeah.
If you haven't seen it.
People are like, that's Trayvon Martin's dad.
And there's no evidence of that anywhere.
No one can find evidence of that.
So that's just a kind of funny lore that's already happened about this video that's been out for three days.
Yeah, I just saw an article that was like, no, that's not Trayvon Martin's dad in the video.
And I was like, okay, cool.
That's good to know.
Yeah, it was just kind of like, I don't know why that happened, why people ran with that.
I just automatically assume anybody whose face I can't see might be Trayvon Martin's dad.
