I love interacting with you all very much, and I know there’s a lot of important political issues in the world going on right now. I love my Linux Mint setup, I support Palestine and trans people, and I’ve blazed through all of OG Star Trek, TNG, Voyager, and am now on DS9.
But I also want to discuss Luka to the Lakers and Kendrick calling Drake a pedophile and getting 5 Grammy’s, a tour, and a Superbowl halftime show out of it, you know? I wanna talk about your country’s Eurovision entries. Am I just not in the right communities?
I don’t know about that.
Pop culture allows people with a voice/audience to have their say which influences the cultural zeitgeist.
Take Kendrick Lamar since I’m a huge fan and OP mentioned him specifically.
In 2018 he earned a Pulitzer Prize for Music, making history as the first non-classical or non-jazz artist to win. The Pulitzer board praised the album Damn for its “virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African American life”. Essentially, the album was recognised for its deep storytelling, social commentary, and innovative musical composition.
It’s incredibly reductive to label all pop culture as mindless drivel. When if you look, there are actually many artists who have a message to spread and are socially conscious.
As long as that message remains profitable and doesn’t challenge the status quo too much
Again, I’m not so sure about that.
Take Macklemore releasing songs in support of Palestine like Hinds Hall.
This does not get shown in recommendations on sites like YouTube and is only really shown to audiences that support Palestine. Macklemore could have chosen to ignore this topic like most main stream artists, but he believed in what he wrote about and made the song regardless of how well it would do.