lofi "marxist" rappers i recommend

    While it seems like a weird pairing, a German philosopher with a nice beard that died 100 years ago and a rapper from Brooklyn who runs an official Twitter account called @darkskinmanson have much in common. Despite the overwhelmingly prevalent view of rap as a materialistic outlet meant to promote expensive flexes and absolute excess, many rappers use their music to do the opposite: delivering powerful commentary on the harms of societal structures and expectations. In this post, I chose highlights from three rappers who seem to understand the problems caused by the expropriation of surplus just as well as Karl Marx. The rappers on this list don't speak out in as maximalist a fashion as artists like Run the Jewels, but the specter of capitalist social relations often looms over their music, where they acknowledge the negative consequences of a world focused on production and profit. 

MAVI: "Love, of Money"

    MAVI is a neuroscience student at Howard University, who just so happens to make brilliantly soulful music in his spare time. His work takes a similar approach to peers like Earl Sweatshirt, consisting of raps in relatively winding sentences that spill over the beat. Instead of short, predictable streaming-friendly rhythms, MAVI chooses to focus equally on silence, paying attention to gaps and marginal spaces that let words and imagery ring hypnotically like a poetry reading. "Love, of Money" hosts a depressing analysis of the Marxist idea of alienation over a beat that sounds like caramel, possibly more fit for a dinner party or a slow jam on a lacquered wood floor. He equates the quest for love with the infatuation with money—the bills in his wallet sound like his heart in his rib cage—and observes that external demands of production limit his ability to follow his own will and find his own love. The melodic cadences of his raps fade out just as breezily as they come in, necessitating the press of the replay button like a deep breath.

billy woods: "Arkeology" 

    billy woods is a rapper based in New York and a part of NYC rap group Armand Hammer, who released the excellent album Haram this year. woods' raps, tackling difficult subjects like colonialism or antiblackness, are measured attacks on the beat from multiple angles. His steely voice delivers powerfully unsheltered narratives that literally activate different parts of your brain than the head bopping or crooning urges that music usually cures. On his spiritual collab album Brass with Black futurist and poet Moor Mother, the record "Arkeology" captures the emptiness and unacknowledged indebtedness of racialized capitalist reality. "Dig a hole, toss in everything I stole/ Fake gold snatched off the pharaoh's bones," he repeats, an amazingly well rhyming line that refers to both the exploitation of workers to turn unnecessary profits and the commodified slave labor that built the shining 'city on a hill' of America. "Arkeology" sounds like the earth is slowly rising to swallow you up, like the debts of post-Christopher Columbus society are now being repaid by force. While it's definitely not something to play in the club, the flow and lyricism is closer to an art exhibition: worth exploring again and again, because you will find new corners of the record to think about every time. 

JPEGMAFIA: "I'll Never Forgive Hipsters For What They Did To Brooklyn"

    Brooklyn rapper JPEGMAFIA's sense of humor and adaptable, experimental rapping style keeps his records consistently fresh and interesting. His ever-changing voice can shift hurriedly from inspired shouts to crooning pleas to softly textured singing all in the same thirty seconds, which suit the distorted yet soulful instrumentals he selects. JPEGMAFIA records cover topics like everyday racism and right-wing extremism with surprising elegance, like the brutally simple roast "Word on the street, you fucked Tomi Lahren" on "Libtard Anthem." On "I'll Never Forgive Hipsters For What They Did To Brooklyn," off the beautifully named album Communist Slow Jams, Peggy tackles gentrification—a frequently discussed issue in Marxist urban theory. He explains how hipster 'culture vultures' have appropriated and uprooted Brooklyn culture, in a clear parallel with the rapid gentrification and exile of poorer, mainly minority groups. Through gentrification, Brooklyn land is being turned into an object that must provide maximum value in terms of capital accumulation: both in physicality and in spirit. Aside from the social commentary, however, the clicks, buzzes, and hums of the instrumental modulating behind effortlessly cool lines like "What you know about the 56 yards/99 ni**as who's getting robbed for their Charizards" make the record just as much of a banger as it is food for thought. 


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