Time did a list of its top 10 protest songs of all-time. As a general rule, I don’t go too hard on the compositions of these lists because I’ve done a few, and they’re so much harder than you realize. I once did a list of the top 10 freshmen in the history of college basketball. I wrote it in 2007. I was all of 26 years old. So yeah, I probably missed a couple. And yes, people are quick to let you know what an idiot you are for forgetting they’re third cousin when you, literally, tried to cull the best of 35 years worth of players.
Then there’s the stuff that makes the list because either the writer or the editor wants to be cute. On the Time list, it’s “Georgia Bush.” When Vibe did a list of the top 100 love songs around 10 years ago, they put Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” back-to-back with 112’s “Cupid.” There’s no way in hell that happens without someone trying to be cute. It just doesn’t.
So I’m not going to say my list is any more definitive than anyone else’s. After all, all I did was go through my iTunes and scan Spotify for an hour. But if you asked me, right now, to put down 10, I’d give you the following…
(Oh, and you can check this list on Spotify here.)
10. Fuck Tha Police, NWA.
We can go toe-to-toe in the middle of a cell…
This is me being cute, because I don’t think it goes on the list…except it has to. First, finding out the motivation for this was LAPD throwing Dre and a couple of the fellas on the concrete for riding around shooting a paintball gun didn’t exactly make me see these cats as social crusaders. I hope the law snatches up anyone doing some nonsense like that. We don’t play with guns. Not even play guns.
But did it change the game? Did they hit dead on what zillions were feeling? Did they manage to scare the bejeezus out of America? And did this open the floodgates for countless critiques of the cops in hip hop? It sure did.
I just happen not to go along with the narrative of NWA being anything more than a really, really good group that liked to shock people. “Fuck Tha Police” is on the same album as “Gangsta, Gangsta,” where Cube said, “life ain’t nothin’ but bitches and money.” But even if they did it by accident, they got it right here.
9. Ball of Confusion, Temptations.
An eye for an eye
A tooth for a tooth
Vote for me, and I’ll set you free
Rap on brother, rap on
Not a lotta protest out of Motown, in general, save for the largely independent Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder stuff of the ’70s. Thing about the Temptations was you could pretty much give them any song, and they could sing it to death. What gets me is how they may have actually been better singing about the world than singing about love, even if all there really was to say was, “yo, the game’s real messed up right now.”
And the band played on…
8. American Skin, Bruce Springsteen.
If an officer stops you
Promise me you’ll always be polite,
that you’ll never ever run away
Promise Mama you’ll keep your hands in sight
The key word, of course, is American. It’s the most common problem black people have getting support for their causes, the idea that our problems are simply our own. The world looks to the black community, while any student of history knows the difficulty affecting social change without, at the very least, legitimate sympathy from those in the majority. Well here’s Bruce, wondering why in the world the cops keep shooting American citizens and getting away with it.
(In return, Springsteen was chastised by Giuliani and called, among other things, a “floating fag” by the president of the New York Fraternal Order of Police.)
7. Stand!, Sly and the Family Stone.
You’ve been sitting much too long
there’s a permanent crease in your right and wrong
Stand!
Where most of these songs are marked by intensity, Sly makes standing so easy. Which, I suppose, was the point.
6. Killing in the Name of, Rage Against the Machine.
Fuck you. I won’t do what you tell me.
It’s the best of Rage mixed with the worst: good intentions and energy being reduced to sloganeering. But when this one dropped, there was nothing like it. And the general idea, not to let your behavior be dictated arbitrary external rules, doesn’t require much depth. Oh, and the band is just incredible.
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5. War Pigs/Luke’s Wall, Black Sabbath.
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees the war pig’s crawling
So Geezer, whom I presume wrote the lyrics, says the song was about Vietnam. Ozzy, whom I presumed just sang what Geezer told him to sing, said the group was totally unaware of what was going on in Vietnam. And ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because you can slap any war in as the subject of this song and it still hold. It’s the Hummer recruiting for the Army at black college football games, the scene in “All Quiet on the Western Front” when dude checks the dead soldier’s ID to realize he’s just a worker, the risks of the G.I. Bill…it’s the world. And it’s the reason many think this one’s the best metal song ever made.
4. Get Up, Stand Up, Bob Marley and the Wailers.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights
Twas hard to pick which Bob song to go with (was leaning toward “Them Belly Full), so I went with this at the danger of seeming cliche. Except…have you really paid attention to what’s going on here?
So basically, they said Jesus was holding the people back. It’s very similar to Malcolm’s critique of southern preachers. Thing is, I’d argue Malcolm was wrong and didn’t quite get what King et al were doing. But as a Rasta, Bob wasn’t taking digs at Christianity. He challenged it to play for today instead of making a spot in heaven, to not let faith turn into resignation, to appreciate man’s power — his need, in fact — to do the work of God on Earth. Heaven doesn’t have to wait, and today’s hell doesn’t have to be permanent. But nothing changes if you sit and wait.
3. The Guns of Brixton, The Clash.
When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting in death row
It’s one thing to sing a song of protest. It’s another to challenge people’s willingness to shoot someone. It’s “Fuck Tha Police” for a different era, Marley’s message in words a black man could never have gotten away with in 1979. And, of course, this one got a whole lot more real this summer.
2. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Gil Scott-Heron.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkins strolling through Watts
in a Red, Black and Green liberation jumpsuit
that he had been saving For just the proper occasion.
For my money, Gil’s the most talented popular musician of his lifetime. He was a genius that could speak with knowledge and authority, sing with power and vulnerability, and never sacrifice spontaneity or energy whether reading a poem or singing a ballad. And he never missed a thing.
That’s the killer about “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” He didn’t leave anyone out. White politicians, the black middle class, the movies and the dummies that watch them…he stuck every single one of them. He did it with humor and honesty. He challenged and gave no quarter. And he did it with no time for questioning. He was too busy getting to “a better day,” and he wasn’t waiting on you to come along. He did stop to issue a warning: when it comes, you won’t notice, and there won’t be time to get on the side of right.
1. Fight the Power, Public Enemy.
Let’s get down to business
mental, self-defensive fitness
It’s not PE’s masterpiece (that’s “Welcome to the Terrordome”), and it’s not even as inflammatory as the still-relevant “By the Time I Get to Arizona.” It is, however, what Spike Lee asked Chuck to give him for the “Do the Right Thing:” an anthem. It was the perfect marriage of the Bomb Squad’s collages and Chuck’s voice. The platform, using Spike’s greatest work as a backdrop, helped make the song seem so close to real life and not like an ideologically antiquated relic from 20 years prior. It was PE’s call to arms, a signal that they wouldn’t be going back to Yo! Bum Rush the Show! after It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. They were like Marley in ’79, whether they knew it or not: three albums to go before their time in the sun was up, and a whole lot to say. And most of that could be encapsulated in three words: fight the power.
