Lil Nas X has this week a sensational music video released. It’s called “Industry Baby” and begins with him being sentenced to a prison street in Montero State Prison. The Montero State Prison turns out to be a kind of gay paradise where young, muscular black men shake butts and genitals in a long shower dance scene with their savior (Lil Nas X). No false hopes, the corresponding parts of the body are censored. Everyone wears pink and is in a good mood and gay, except for co-star Jack Harlow – he has to make out with a policewoman. When Lil Nas X finally breaks out, he frees all other inmates who follow him out of the gates of the burning prison to freedom.
The video is accompanied by a fundraiser for The Bail Project. Lil Nas X seeks to raise awareness of “the disproportionate impact of cash deposits on black Americans”. To date, $ 50,000 has been donated. But the fundraiser is also supposed to justify that Lil Nas X portrays his fictional prison as a gay utopia – in a country where the penal system exercises structural violence against black people. But that’s where he starts. The video shifts the traditional coordinates of mainstream hip hop. And Lil Nas X proves that pop music will work better than ever in America in 2021 to stylize social disputes as heroic battles. What was once inexpressible and above all deadly – homosexuality – is finally echoing from the rooftops in his video. Or in his own words: “I got what they waiting for (I got what they waiting for)”.
John Glacier is a young woman who gave herself this name because she is often described as “icy”. Her music isn’t exactly icy, but it’s definitely as cool as the cheap drinks she sings about. Her debut album “Shiloh: Lost For Words” will be released on Friday on PLZ Make It Ruins / Rough Trade. If you absolutely have to invent a genre for it, you could call their music bedroom hop. Her hip-hop is introverted and fiddly, in places almost krautrock. The hypnotic repetitions of the track “Platoon” are almost reminiscent of Cosey Fanni Tutti’s “Time To Tell”, and that’s a very good thing, because Cosey Fanni Tutti plus hip-hop is of course extremely exciting. Many tracks are only a minute or two long. “If Anything” starts with “In a Trance / in a Trance”, a foggy stumbling towards the bar, and that’s how you feel. In its fragments and associations it is captivating, in places almost disturbing music. John Glacier himself calls the album “selfish”. Can music be selfish? And if so, isn’t it always? If John Glacier’s selfishness always produces such fruits, it is to be hoped that it will become even more selfish. Perhaps it will then be able to stop climate change on its own.
Yola’s “Stand For Myself” is not cool at all, but rather surging hot. Even the cover screams: “Disco!” Does anyone remember the live version of “I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” by Boys Town Gang – a song that gives you hope and energy even in the darkest moments? In its best moments, “Stand For Myself” evokes the spirit of this music. The album is cheesy and retro, the brass struggles with the violins to see who deserves more attention, the uh-uh-uh choirs do their thing, and sometimes, just sometimes, you might almost forget that time is the stupid habit has to perish. Other songs on the album are a little too ballad and radio-friendly to be really fun, and then slide into the “heard a thousand times and forgotten” thing. But the retro-perfection also works then. And Yola definitely has all the feelings Hollywood always tells us about. If you’re angry, you could put their music in an elevator, but it’s actually more like fireworks in a hot tub. Guaranteed not environmentally friendly, but fragrant, glittering and in some moments more than beneficial for the soul.