Queen Bey drops in all sorts of hot and charity-ready on a ‘Mi Gente‘ remix in solidarity for the Latinidad community in service to natural disaster aid, Shooter Jennings and friends do the same for Texas with a ‘hell yeah’ for the Rebuild Texas fund, and more, in a lovely showing of humanitarian lyric art direction on the 39th week of the year’s Best Lyric Vids.
J Balvin, Willy William – ‘Mi Gente’ ft. Beyoncé
Pop-star studded with everyone from David Guetta to Diplo, and of course Beyoncê, this new remix of the Columbian reggeaton monster fusion dance smash builds upon the Latinidad pride of its narrative, Beyoncé singing in both Spanish and English, using her English verese to tell an allegory about love — wink, Jay-Z, nudge — alluding to how actions speak louder than words, especially in the hurricane and earthquake crisis scenario in which she’s vowed to donate all the proceeds of this song towards. Bringing home the humanitarian vibes is a grainy VHS karaoke supercut aesthetic of everyone shaking their asses in solidarity, while little dancing Beyoncê, J Balvin and Willy William heads making sure you can sing along to the lyrics below:
Baths – ‘Yeoman’
Baths’, a.k.a. Will Wiesenfeld, said in a press release (via Spin) for his new album, Romoplasm, that he was aiming to hone in conceptually on his love for anime and gaming. While you can feel the arcade-hero skip in the burbling synthetic melody of “Yeomen,” the message is not a clear one on this track that shares a name with an archaic medieval social class. Which is fine and a space in which Wiesenfeld definitely stretches out, playing around with themes of love and hope on a geometric backdrop combining a perfect mashing of organic and digital:
Matt Cameron – ‘Time Can’t Wait’
Why grunge royalty Cameron waited until 54 to get out from behind the drum kit exclusively and cut his own record is a curious state of affairs. It’s hard to shake the arena-bred alt-rock out of him, pounding out of the gate with a Queens of the Stone Age meets Muse vibe going on here, but it all swarms together beautifully in this cosmic mountain warning to not take time for granted:
Wraths – ‘My Home’
Pennywise — the misfit skate Cal-punks from the 90s, not the killer clown that they ironically took their name from — frontman Jim Lindberg has another project going on called Wraths. A little more DC hardcore around the edges, they basically made the punk version of a “Big Yellow Taxi Cab” rant, replacing Joni Mitchell’s more abstract line that we “paved paradise to put up a parking lot” with a more, ahem, aggressive, approach. I guess you need to start swearing when urban sprawl still is sucking the souls out of communities five decades later and counting:
Shooter Jennings – ‘Do You Love Texas?’
Of all the bullshit that’s happening around MAGA and Texas’ direct/indirect narrative in the Red, White and Blue Republican agenda, it’s refreshing to see a cattle-driving heel-kicker of a country song with absolutely no other statement other than its love for everything that makes the Lone Star State great. For Shooter Jennings and the saloon to prairie landscapes that dominate this beer-swilling, ‘Waylon to Willie‘ PSA, the ‘hell yeah!’ chorus is not only harmless, but is in philanthropic service to the Rebuild Texas fund for all the state’s damage from Hurricane Harvey:
