Let us tell you about this week’s Best Lyric Vids. The Best Lyric Vids there are. Let us tell you. Other week’s lyric videos this year maybe not so great. This week? The best. Trump? Such a nasty dude. Okay? Everyone’s talking about how nasty the dude is. But let us tell you, we know nasty. Ask Dave Eggers, too. 30 Days, 50 Songs? Best nasty Trump list there is. Those are some guys who know nasty. A Tribe Called Quest? Best Quest around. Believe us. And then listen to these. Because he’s going to be our president now.
A Tribe Called Quest – ‘We the People’
The first Tribe album since ’98’s The Love Movement sees The Low End Theory figure come to life, as Q-Tip and the late-Phife Dawg pick up right where they left off speaking for the artists on the front lines of the socio-political culture wars. For the refrain, generation Trump ethos gets put on blast, sending up his anti-American exclusion of diversity:
Moby and the Homeland Choir – ‘Trump Is on Your Side’
Cut from a folk-pop cloth, Moby ditches the turntables to soak a tale in sarcasm about the nobility of Trump taking care of his job-less minions. Because of course that what his platform was built on, making the middle class great again. As a visual aid, Moby went with b-roll footage of post-war era Americas doing their civic voting duty with pencils and brains behind closed curtain:
Modern Baseball – ‘Bart to the Future Part 2: The Musical’
Based on The Simpsons episode that predicted a Trump presidency, “Bart Goes to the Future,” nestles itself in that scrappy emo corner that dominated the early aughts, generally cryptic in its verses, but combined with its teleprompter tape vibe and repeated refrain about yearning to be someone else, taps into the kind of dread and anger a lot of Americans are feeling right now about pop-culture making the joke reality:
Rogue Wave – ‘Vote for Me Dummy’
“Trump and all that he represents is political arson at its worst,” bridges a statement from Rogue Wave about their decision to cover this Guided By Voices otherwise politically neutral standard. Sonically it’s take-for-take, the same grainy, lo-fi fun the GBV deal in. Lyrically, too. But in the supercut of Trump’s grossest power-Billionaire youth, gallivanting around megalopolis upon megalopolis looking like that silver-spoon-born ivy-league prick that doesn’t even need to make the mark to get the job, overlaid with Hillary Clinton doing the Macarena at the 1996 DNC, it’s like a piece of appalling beautiful poetry about our current state of National affairs:
Clipping. – ‘Fat Fingers’
Torch-bearers of the Death Grips‘ new industrial aggro hip-hop frontier, the lengthy statement that comes up with this gem reveals a diss track/battle rap template Clipping. were going for, made intentionally quick and with found sounds in order to get it to the medium broadcast and carry on the battle. Tons of punches thrown in under three minutes that reveals all the facts that makes Trump deplorable. The video is equally crude, scrawled like chalk on pavement, the only image a cell-phone shot display of Trump’s Hollywood star getting destroyed:
