New Releases
Noname Serves Up the Perfect Response to J. Cole with "Song 33"
The J. Cole and Noname beef has a clear winner.
06.19.2020
Just a couple of days after J. Cole dropped a petty track supposedly aimed at her, Noname has issued her response.
In her first new solo song of the year, "Song 33," the fan favorite Chicago rapper teamed up with prolific producer Madlib for a jazzy track that touches on the deaths of numerous Black people, especially Black trans women. She references Oluwatoyin Salau, a young Black woman in Florida who was found dead after tweeting about her sexual assault. "Why Toyin body don't embody all the life she wanted?" Noname raps in her trademark smooth flow. "A baby, just nineteen / I know I dream all black / I seen her everything, immortalizin' tweets all caps / They say they found her dead / One girl missin', another one go missin'."
<p>Later in the song, Noname mentions<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/george-floyd-death" target="_blank"> George Floyd,</a> the Black man murdered by police in Minneapolis last month and whose death spawned a wave of <a href="https://www.journiest.com/black-lives-matter-protests-2646151397.html" target="_blank">Black Lives Matter protests around the world</a>. "I guess the ego hurt now / It's time to go to work, wow, look at him go / He really 'bout to write about me when the world is in smokes? / When it's people in trees? / When George was beggin' for his mother, saying he couldn't breathe / You thought to write about me?"</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-633"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent1 - mid_content --></p><p class="media-headline">
<strong>Song 32</strong></p><iframe src="https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:track:7GWAIzOmt5iznpu8RbSiSI" id="805b9" frameborder="0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a1407bff9ee730173642836717ea35c4" expand="1" height="480" width="100%"></iframe><p><br></p><p><a href="https://www.popdust.com/j-cole-snow-on-tha-bluff-2646194824.html" target="_self">J. Cole's new song, "Smoke on tha Bluff,</a>" was written about an unnamed woman whose social media posts surrounding Black Lives Matter left him feeling ostracized. "My IQ is average, there's a young lady out there, she way smarter than me / I scrolled through her timeline in these wild times, and I started to read / She mad at these crackers, she mad at these capitalists, mad at these murder police," he raps in the song. "She mad at the celebrities, lowkey I be thinkin' she talkin' 'bout me...But sh*t, it's something about the queen tone that's botherin' me."</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-635"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent2 - long_content --></p><p>Noname has always been vocal about the causes she believes in—even <a href="https://www.nonamebooks.com/" target="_blank">starting her own book club</a>—and has criticized some of her fellow Black rappers for doing the bare minimum in their activism. J. Cole has been spotted at numerous protests throughout the years, but he's stayed relatively silent on social media and has hardly spoken about Black women and trans people like <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/us/breonna-taylor-shooting-officer-firing/index.html" target="_blank">Breonna Taylor </a>and Tony McDade, who were both also killed by police. As Noname puts it in "Song 33," "It's trans women bein' murdered and this is all he can offer?"</p><p>Over the past few days, multiple Black people have also been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/us/robert-fuller-malcolm-harsch-deaths.html" target="_blank">found dead hanging from trees</a>, as Noname mentions briefly in "Song 33." According to the <em>New York Times, </em>authorities initially ruled that the death of 24-year-old Robert L. Fuller was a suicide without completing the investigation. His family maintains that Fuller was not suicidal, as <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/18/headlines/fear_grows_of_modern_day_lynchings_as_six_people_of_color_are_found_hanged" target="_blank">fears of lynching rise amidst the protests</a>.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-636"> </div>
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">J. Cole - Snow On Tha Bluff (Official Audio)</small>
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<a href="https://youtu.be/OZa3HyVLimQ" target="_blank">youtu.be</a>
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</p><p>After dropping "Snow on tha Bluff," J. Cole was criticized for demanding Black women to "educate" him, despite being a grown adult who is fully capable of doing such research himself. He also came under fire for criticizing the "queen tone" of the unnamed woman in the song (who, it seems, is almost definitely Noname). This is tone-policing in its most blatant form.<br></p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-637"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent3 - longer_content --></p><p><a href="https://medium.com/@tessintrovert/racism-101-tone-policing-92481c044b6a" target="_blank">As blogger Tess Martin wrote</a>, "Tone policing describes a diversionary tactic used when a person purposely turns away from the message behind her interlocutor's argument in order to focus solely on the delivery of it." Tone policing is a microaggressive way to further suppress marginalized voices, even if it's coming from a Black artist like J. Cole. Noname has every right to be as fired up, angry, and loud as she wants, because Black women are in critical danger.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-638"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent33 - longer_content --></p><h2></h2><p>"Snow on tha Bluff" was a counterproductive song, and "Song 33" is the perfect response to J Cole. Thank you, Noname, for existing.</p>
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TV News
Tucker Carlson Has an Opening for a New Secretly Racist Writer (Again)
Blake Neff is just the latest secret racist to be exposed and ousted from Tucker Carlson's orbit.
07.13.2020
Tucker Carlson Tonight
On Friday Blake Neff—the top writer for Tucker Carlson Tonight—resigned after years of his racist, sexist, and homophobic Internet posts were exposed.
As a result, Tucker Carlson now has an opening for a new top writer who is better at hiding their secret racism. But maybe that assessment isn't fair. After all, Carlson isn't like the rest of Fox News.
Sure, he earns millions of dollars a year telling his viewers to be afraid of Democrats because if they get into office "people who supported Donald Trump will be punished" and that "there's never been an American political party as radical and as angry as the Democrats are now."
<p>He even tells his viewers that the Republican Party is "<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-gop-voters-demand-three-things" target="_blank">the only institution still open to the rest of us</a>, to Americans who want to live as they did just 15 years ago … without being harassed and harangued by self-righteous lunatics who mean them harm." And yes, <a href="https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/tucker-carlson.php" target="_blank">Carlson is the son of a wealthy heiress and an ambassador/international propagandist</a> ,yet he somehow claims to be critical of "elites."</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-632"></div>
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Tucker: What we're watching is class war disguised as race war</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GozPhZq_S2k" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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</p><p>But Tucker Carlson is different from all the other wealthy fear mongers at <em>Fox News</em> who serve the Republican party and pretend to hate "elites"—because Tucker Carlson understands the plight of the common man. <strong>He recognizes that the promise of America—that each new generation will live better than the one before it—has eroded for a huge portion of the population.</strong><br></p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-634"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent11 - mid_content --></p><p>He understands parents' fears that their children will never be able to achieve the economic stability required to raise families of their own. And he understands that those with the most influence in this country benefit from infighting within the working and middle class—that solidarity is the only way to claw back some of the wealth and the freedom that has been funneled upward over decades of power consolidation.</p><h4>Solidarity for Who?</h4><p>But who does Tucker Carlson really want to include in that solidarity? Who deserves the benefits that come with that fight? If we rebuild that American promise, will it be portioned out in equal shares to every American? Or does it only belong to the people who had it before—the straight white cis men?</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-635"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent2 - long_content --></p><p>That's certainly the way it seems when Carlson describes Black Lives Matter protesters as "angry, suspicious, tribal" and insists that voters don't support politicians like Republican Senator Mike Braun of Indiana—who recently introduced a bill to limit the qualified immunity that makes it so difficult to prosecute police who kill unarmed civilians.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-636"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent22 - long_content --></p><p><strong>According to Carlson, we must not "get caught in pointless debates about whether or not this is a racist country," when (according to Carlson) "clearly it isn't."</strong> While that may be a hard pill to swallow for Americans who are disproportionately policed, prosecuted, and excluded from our nation's wealth—who never really got to enjoy the heyday of the American dream and "just 15 years ago" had never seen a President who wasn't a white man—maybe that's not Tucker's fault.</p><p>At first blush his insistence that we can live in "a colorblind meritocracy" as long as we just ignore race and get rid of affirmative action programs that attempt to correct historic racial imbalances may seem like the exact opposite of solidarity—like a man encouraging white Americans to view themselves as the victims of marginalized groups striving for equality. But that can't be true.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-637"> </div>
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<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Tucker Carlson Makes Racist Comments in Newly Unearthed Audio | NowThis</small>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TjXAwAAjTY" target="_blank">www.youtube.com</a>
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</p><p>After all, Tucker hates the elites who stoke division and "keep the population at one another's throats" for their own benefit. So wouldn't he encourage his overwhelmingly white audience to listen to the perspective of Black Americans who—shockingly—actually know better than Tucker Carlson what their own experiences have been and how much racism has affected them?<br></p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-638"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent33 - longer_content --></p><p>Wouldn't he encourage his viewers—in the spirit of solidarity—to do <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ciwjHVHYg" target="_blank">the bare minimum research</a> to understand how historic and ongoing systemic racism in the U.S. has maintained deep divides in terms of wealth, education, and access to opportunities.How advantages have accumulated across generations so that even low-income white Americans—<a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/1/9/16860994/life-expectancy-us-income-inequality" target="_blank">who are admittedly struggling right now and deserve to be treated better</a> by our society—still have <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/racial-wealth-gap/" target="_blank">more wealth than middle-income black Americans</a>?</p><p>Surely, the <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/why-did-black-lives-matter-protests-attract-unprecedented-white-support/" target="_blank">white protesters who have shown up</a> in support of the Black Lives Matter movement since <a href="https://www.popdust.com/derek-chauvin-hat-2646109506.html" target="_self">the horrific killing of George Floyd</a> represent a clearer path to achieving cross-racial solidarity among working and middle class Americans than does a wealthy white man on TV telling his white audience that BLM's complaints are baseless...</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-639"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent4 - longest_content --></p><p>Unless Tucker Carlson agrees with Blake Neff that some white people are "fully supportive of a F**k Whitey agenda" and that "there's a suicidal impulse to Western peoples that honestly feels almost biological in origin" (a view which seems to echo <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbLzVZysFyM" target="_blank">the perspective of banned YouTuber Black Pigeon Speaks</a>). Does he really want all struggling Americans to be on the same team, or only white Americans?</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQ1Mzg5OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0OTI4Njk4MX0.2R3rjClWxOzq5clOBANSUJ_8X10KgaD2kiX8sCZ7Y2Q/img.jpg?width=980" id="9e3af" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0659e0901f29cb0ba4ccdbafcfd6014b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Blake Neff">
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">conservativewriters.org</small></p><p>Can it be that Tucker Carlson is exactly the kind of elite he rails against—sowing division and resentment among people with less power so they don't question his position?<br></p><p><strong>No. The only explanation is that Blake Neff—that diabolical secret racist—was planting these dog-whistle messages in Carlson's broadcasts.</strong></p><p>Now that Neff has been revealed and Carlson has seen that his former writer was going on a law school forum known as AutoAdmit and using the pseudonym "CharlesXII" to assert that "Black doods staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down"—the <em>Fox News</em> host must be questioning everything.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-640"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent44 - longest_content --></p><p>Prior to these new revelations about Neff, Carlson had referred to him as a "wonderful writer" and even acknowledged Neff in his book, <em>Ship of Fools</em>, both for helping with the book and for "greatly improv[ing] our nightly show on Fox." Neff himself has claimed to be at least <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/media/tucker-carlson-writer-blake-neff/index.html" target="_blank">partially responsible for everything Tucker Carlson reads off a teleprompter</a>.</p><p>So how could someone <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-iraqis-are-semiliterate-primitive-monkeys" target="_blank">as not-racist as Tucker Carlson</a> have allowed himself to be a mouthpiece for a man like Neff? A man who recently responded to the posted question, "Would u let a JET BLACK congo n*****r do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?" with "I wouldn't get LASIK from an Asian for free, so, no?"</p><p>Clearly Neff's attitude is incompatible with Tucker Carlson's stated goal of colorblindness. He must be doing some intense soul searching right now and asking himself if maybe America is in fact a racist country. Surely this will result in some major soul-searching…</p><div id="ec2ea" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="19b69d17f8f10e24f01100c93228e05b"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1281772176387997702" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">".@TuckerCarlson credited Neff in the acknowledgments of his book, 'Ship of Fools,' for providing research.
In th… https://t.co/xiCJkRicfe</div> — Padma Lakshmi (@Padma Lakshmi)<a href="https://twitter.com/PadmaLakshmi/statuses/1281772176387997702">1594433275.0</a></blockquote></div><p>Along with his racist commentary, Neff reportedly mocked various women as "shrews," used homophobic slurs in multiple posts, and claimed that freshman congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, and Rashida Tlaib (collectively referred to as "the Squad") want to turn the U.S. into "A DUMPING GROUND FOR PEOPLE FROM THIRD WORLD S**THOLES."<br></p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-641"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - bottomofpage - bottom_of_page --></p><p>Carlson has not made a public comment on Neff's conduct since his anonymous activity was revealed, but the <em>Fox News</em> leadership released an official statement claiming that "Neff's abhorrent conduct on this forum was never divulged to the show or the network until Friday, at which point we swiftly accepted his resignation. Make no mistake, actions such as his cannot and will not be tolerated at any time in any part of our work force."</p><p>Carlson is scheduled to address the revelation of Neff's bigotry and his firing on Monday night's broadcast, during which he will no doubt announce a new era of <em>Tucker Carlson Tonight</em>. An era in which he operates with more humility, nuance, and engagement with other perspectives. If his old approach led him to embrace the perspectives of such a hateful person, then he must surely want to adjust his methods.</p><p>If Tucker Carlson's purported values are sincere, he will question both his and <em>Fox News</em>' role in stoking racial resentment, consider the possibility that he was unfairly demonizing progressives who expressed concern for social justice, and bring more diverse opinions into his writing staff to challenge the orthodoxy that allowed someone like Blake Neff to thrive.</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-645"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent_4 645 - longest_content --></p><p>Unless this isn't the first time this has happened to Tucker Carlson…</p><h4>This isn't the first time this has happened to Tucker Carlson</h4><p>If Carlson has previously hired someone who was secretly an avowed racist to produce content for him, then maybe there's a pattern here. Maybe Tucker Carlson is lying about his own views, and actually seeks out people who will sublimate racism and other forms of bigotry into dog whistles and covert hatred. Hmm...</p><div id="22903" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e3484e3a0e5926f621942001c14c29df"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1281760747245142021" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">When is @DailyCaller gonna go after the cancel culture attacking Blake Neff? https://t.co/fKOgQfU5xx</div> — Scott Greer (@Scott Greer)<a href="https://twitter.com/ScottMGreer/statuses/1281760747245142021">1594430550.0</a></blockquote></div><p>In 2010 Tucker Carlson launched the conservative news site <em>The Daily Caller</em>. Last month <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/502092-tucker-carlson-leaving-the-daily-caller" target="_blank">Carlson announced that he had sold his stake in the site</a> after years of scandal involving multiple contributors, along with <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/maga-trolls/daily-caller-has-published-white-supremacists-anti-semites-and-bigots-here-are-ones-we" target="_blank">deputy editor Scott Greer, being outed as devout white nationalists</a>.</p><p><strong>Greer used the pseudonym "Michael McGregor" to work as the managing editor of white nationalist Richard Spencer's publication <em>Radix Journal</em>, where Greer expressed anti-Black and anti-Semitic views.</strong><br></p><p>When this was revealed, Carlson's partner at <em>The Daily Caller</em>, Neil Patel, issued a statement remarkably similar to <em>Fox News</em>' comments on Neff, saying, "We won't publish him, anyone in these circles, or anyone who thinks like them. People who associate with these losers have no business writing for our company."</p><p><div id="ezoic-pub-ad-placeholder-646"> </div>
<!-- End Ezoic - incontent_9 646 - incontent_9 --></p><h2></h2><p>Weird coincidence that one man in a country that "clearly isn't" racist just happens to keep associating himself with so many secret racists...</p>
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MUSIC
Coachella 2020 Might Be Its Most Female-Inclusive Lineup Yet
Though the headliners are all male, Coachella's latest lineup boasts a pretty hefty roster of women.
01.03.2020
Coachella 2020 is officially on the horizon.
The most Instagrammable weekends of the year are coming in April, and for those who want to see some live music in-between snapping photos, the lineup has just been released. Surprisingly, this might be Coachella's most female-populated lineup yet.
To refresh your memory on the perpetual gender imbalance of the music festival industry, Ariana Grande's headlining slot at Coachella last year marks only the fifth time in the festival's 20-year history that a woman has held the honor, following Bjork (twice), Lady Gaga, and Beyonce. While this year's Coachella unfortunately boasts all-male headliners, as the font gets smaller on the poster, there's a surprising number of women performing.
Weekend 1 is sold out 🌴 Register for Weekend 2 presale at https://t.co/x8PRTb12Eh. Presale starts Monday 1/6 at 12p… https://t.co/Rj2e05Know— Coachella (@Coachella)1578020757.0
The top-billed woman is Lana Del Rey, who—and I say this with utmost respect to Frank Ocean—should absolutely be headlining after just releasing arguably the strongest project of her career. The second slot in each day's lineup includes multiple solo ladies who just dropped notable records of their own: Megan Thee Stallion, Summer Walker, FKA Twigs, Ari Lennox, and Marina. Reigning pop princesses like Charli XCX, Kim Petras, and Carly Rae Jepsen will have their time onstage, as well as rising rappers like Princess Nokia, Noname, and Doja Cat. Sets from newcomers like Koffee, Raveena, Amber Mark, and girl in red are sure to wrangle in a plethora of new fans, but loyal listeners will be happy to see established acts like Bishop Briggs, Jessie Reyez, and Lauren Daigle on the setlist, as well. Indieheads can check out Snail Mail, Weyes Blood, and beabadoobee, but if you're looking to get your dance on, sets from Peggy Gou, Yaeji, and virtual Japanese star Hatsune Miku should strike your fancy.
These and many more female artists prove Coachella 2020 has shaped up to provide the festival's most diverse lineup yet. If we can't have a woman headliner, it'd be nice to see more of these names in larger fonts, but this roundup is a step in the right direction.
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