You should read this article in today’s New York Times about how the attitude of musicians in New Orleans has changed since Katrina.
It’s both sad and amazing about how many of the classics songs of New Orleans — music going back a hundred years — now have new meanings. It’s also stirring to watch a community respond to a tragedy of this magnitude.
[Ivan Neville, leader of Dumpstaphunk] moved into a song built on the local greeting “Where y’at?” But one verse listed whereabouts of displaced New Orleanians: “Where y’at? Texas! Mississippi!” Another asked the federal government: “Where y’at, when we really needed you?”
You may also recall that the hip-hop community seemed particularly responsive to Katrina, with Kanye West making his famous pronouncement about George Bush on television and rapper David Banner raising funds for Mississippi victims. Although rap often has a reputation for providing realistic reporting from the streets – keepin’ it real – it’s rare for rap music to actually reflect the politic, social or economic concerns faced in the black community in day-to-day life.
Juvenile, a New Orleans rapper, has spent most of his career doing gangta boasts. But he has just released the single “Get Ya Hustle On,” with a video clip shot in the ruins of the Ninth Ward.
It shows children in masks of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the city’s mayor, C. Ray Nagin, wandering through the wreckage as Juvenile raps lyrics like “We starving, we living like Haiti with no government” and “I’m trying to live, I lost it all in Katrina.” A house he had just built was destroyed in the hurricane.
You can find the video online:
"Get Ya Hustle On/What’s Happenin’" – Juvenile (Video)
Windows Media | Real Media | Quicktime
Tags: Katrina, New Orleans, hip-hop, Ivan Neville, Juvenile
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