Aesop Rock – Coffee & Pigs
Personally, I think this is one of the best and most accurate protest songs of my (North American) generation. I’m part of a generation that found Bob Dylan talking of conflicts past, and a generation that found that Gil Scott-Heron’s advice on staying away from the hard drugs and hard streets that came out of the 80s was already street knowledge because we saw what they both did to idols like Huey P. Newton and Tupac (no Depression, no Vietman War, no Civil War, no ‘War on Drugs’, &c.). And though Indie Rock, Electronica, Jazz, and Soul are definitely a part of us, R&B and Rap are our key voices, not the folk or blues of generations prior.
In that sense, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Immortal Technique have better protest songs for my generation, by far, but they talk of international politics and of less than peaceful protest; most young Americans aren’t ready to here this, and even when they do most can’t or won’t act on it. But what we, the young North American generation, are aware of is the daily rat race, the hate for the morning coffee line (any line), the slow increase of the population and decrease of personal space that makes such lines longer, and the over medication and slight over-policing of our daily lives (these being more apparent to you when you’re part of the [growing] minority). We hate all of this, we are educated enough to recognize and hate all of this. And we hate ourselves too, for being part of this consumerism. But we know that our daily sufferings are nothing to complain about compared to the lives of those less fortunate around the world, and so we see no reason/ right to passionately protest against them.
And at the same time we find that the combination of increased ease of access to diverse music and drugs, and increased ease of making diverse music and drugs has us happily, and ironically, slurring the words we acquired through an overpriced education, consumed by the wonderlands and secret pockets of both forms of desperately sought escapism.
Talking for a whole generation is an act of stupidity, but this is some of what I see – I see a generation that protests and fails to protest in its own apathetical way. We hate the coffee lines, but we stand in them, with our earphones quietly blaring hate for the coffee line.
[1] Rap Genius: Meaning of Aesop Rock’s Coffee
[2] Rap Genius: Meaning of Aesop Rock’s Pigs