A teenage girl in full school uniform steps out of the car, as her enthusiastic mother gives her a thumbs up. On the way past, her mom winds the window down and waves, causing the girl to shudder in embarrassment as she tries to talk to her friends. Another girl, slightly younger but wearing the same school uniform, sinks into the passenger seat as her father, listening to classical music and wearing a hideous striped sweater of aqueous blues and greys, approaches the school; she signals that she’d like to be dropped off somewhere away from the main school entrance. A boy with a mop full of hair and an over-the-shoulder school bag slithers out of a car door, breathing a sigh of relief as his mother pulls away, safe in the knowledge that nobody has seen him (or, more importantly, his maternal chauffeur). It’s a scene ripped straight from any number of high school comedies, although there’s a very definite Englishness to the surrounding suburbs and stuffy blazer-and-tie uniform combinations.
The latter boy then pauses, awestruck, as a shining, brand new, white car rolls past him. We hear the ominous, rumbling bass of dead prez’s ‘Hip Hop’. Inside the car, a teenage daughter turns the volume up, and she and her father – a man with a faultless beard and well-fitting suit (no tie; collar undone, obviously) – nod their heads in unison to the beat. They drive past a group of middle-class, middle-aged women, presumably parents of other children in the school who have gotten together post-drop-off for their morning gossip over mass produced cups of coffee (because women, I guess), and they all turn with a mixture of admiration and lust as the car rolls past. Various groups of other children look on in envy as they hear the bass booming and see their peer cruising in the passenger seat with the window rolled down, distinctly not embarrassed by the experience. This, evidently, is Cool Dad. Cool Dad wears an open-necked shirt. Cool Dad’s children aren’t embarrassed by him. Cool Dad drives a Volkswagen Tiguan. And, for the purposes of this 2016 television advert that still gets played regularly in the UK almost five years after its first airing, Cool Dad listens to… militant, socialist, Pan-African, late ‘90s hip-hop? In the words of Harvey Dent, “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself soundtracking Volkswagen adverts.”
I enjoy comparing this advert to the official music video for dead prez’s ‘Hip Hop’. In the advert, we see exactly three Black faces, and a couple of South Asian faces too. Blink and you’d miss them. The advert is populated almost entirely by middle-class, suburban white people. I understand that this is the point of the advert, and the source of its supposed humour. Without the contrast between the suburban Cool Dad (who is, we inherently understand, only relatively cool, and in actuality definitely still a square) and the “urban” – read Black – music he chooses to play on the school run, the entire premise falls down. Without that dead prez bassline, he’s just a weird, slightly creepy DILF, and any coolness – relative or otherwise – is rendered non-existent. However, in the official music video for the song, pretty much everyone is Black, from the group themselves, draped in face coverings and bandanas, to the dancers, running military-style drills, to the crowd, moshing whilst holding up protest signs that say things like, ‘Food, Clothes, Shelter’. These shots are then interspersed with screens showing slogans: ‘Their system is not working for us’; ‘Without a people’s army, the people have nothing’; ‘Common sense is self-defense’. It is, in every way imaginable, a world away from the British suburb in which Cool Dad and his Volkswagen Tiguan exist, where nearly everything, including the car itself, is white. That’s why, when I first saw the advert, I found it egregiously bizarre. “But they’re literally Black nationalist communists,” I’d tell friends (who couldn’t work out why I’d let Volkswagen’s choice of advert soundtrack bother me). “How can anyone hear that song and think it appropriate to use in that context? It’s a call to arms, not a signifier of coolness. It literally asks, in the song, ‘would you rather have a Lexus or justice, a dream or some substance, a Beamer, a necklace, or freedom?’ And now it’s being used to actually sell cars. Shameless.”
What I failed to realise (in my wonderfully passionate imaginary conversations with my oddly dismissive imaginary friends) is that ‘Hip Hop’ can be both. Yes, it’s a call to arms, but it is also, undoubtedly, a signifier of coolness. That bassline is ageless, a piece of gurgling futurism that still doesn’t sound remotely dated, and likely never will. Instead of relying on the clumsy boom-bap tempo of much of their other work, this song has a sleek, breezy skip to it, comparable to Jay-Z and UGK’s ‘Big Pimpin’’, making it dancefloor-appropriate even in the days of UK garage and dubstep. The lyrics might be berating other rappers for their materialistic urges, but the flows are precise and catchy, and absolutely anyone can chant along to the chorus in any context, regardless of their own political leanings. The vagueness of the hook and the danceability of the beat are the Trojan Horse, inside which dead prez were able to sneak their radical, pro-Black, anti-capitalist verses onto the radio. It worked. It was angry, it was pointed, it was unashamedly intelligent, but it was also cool as fuck. Therein lies the beauty of the song. If you want it to be a call to arms, it is one. However, if you just want something you can bump in the Tiguan to make you feel like Cool Dad, it is that too. In that sense, it really is bigger than hip-hop.
@kokkinos, I'm very sad you're not gonna review my albums because I'm up against you. I would love if you could give the classic kokkinos treatment to them. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
Sure, I 'm ahead of schedule up to this point,so -if everything goes according to plan - I 'm gonna give them a listen on Sunday (none of them are uncharted territory, so one listen shoud suffice to refresh my thoughts on them).
@kokkinos, I'm very sad you're not gonna review my albums because I'm up against you. I would love if you could give the classic kokkinos treatment to them.
Yeah - they are very good. I used to give a shit like that and now I just click buttons like an ape.
Damn... I didn't even realize both those DOOM albums in the same year, tbh. I think it's a genius team to be honest. Haven't re-listened yet, but I love historical "hot damn" moments like that.
What's more impressive is that Take Me To Your Leader AND Vaudeville Villain came out the year before. Very stunning two year stretch.
You know 2004's team is undeniably great and I love Mm Food enough to have an OG copy in my collection but part of me doesn't want to vote for an entire doom team for the same reasons that I'll get an FCC complaint if I play four songs by the same artist on the radio. Even without that though 99's lineup is undeniable. This is some unhinged prime era E-40 and while I actually think he'd only get more unhinged in his hyphy era I don't think the quality ever was this consistent. It's such an oddly colorful record for trunk tapes in chosen sounds. Fuckin They Nose is legendary. The farts in crack commandment. Mouthpiece has some of the greatest E-40 boasts. Ugh. Honestly this might be my favorite release of his that's The Mail Man.
Guerilla Mabb was a great listen. Very familiar with Z-Ro already, the man with elastic vowels and these beautifully sung hooks with an untrained voice that's always cracking a little, infinitely more charming than when someone like Kanye attempts that because it doesn't ever feel like Z-Ro has something to prove. It's too bad he doesn't have any masterpieces that came out in 2005........... or does he. Always lovely hearing Cl'Che on a tape, love her from Screw tapes. And Peaches, my mind was raking itself over trying to figure out where I heard that voice before until it clicked, from that absolutely ridiculous Shaq record. South Side Story is perfect, I mean any Hawk feature in this era was but.... Listen 99 is great and im spending my weekend to stoned to really elaborate efficiently on what makes it great - super underrated selections on the web for similar reasons that most non white techno is. Yet absolutely canonized releases in their respective scenes
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That ad is hysterical!
