Fascism, rock and roll, and hip hop

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Note: I've lived my adult life convinced of the ethical and political importance of music and art, and conformist versus non-conformist art in particular. I'm a follower of Adorno/Marcuse in that regard. Music can be a source of critical thinking, or a form of herding behavior. That's not exactly what I'm talking about here, but it's in the ball park.

Anyway: has our fascist moment been created in part because rock and hip-hop no longer function as oppositional voices?

1. I'm sure many posters can speak to this personally, but of course music was a huge galvanizing force behind the social movements. The anti-war movement, in particular, was inseparable from rock and roll, but obviously the civil rights movement too. Bob Dylan was extremely influential, as was Woody Guthrie. Edwin Starr (War); Barry Mcguire (Eve of Destruction). Fortunate Son. Other artists brought a more radical edge -- "Volunteers" (of America, Jeff Airplane), MC5 (all sorts of songs), etc. In the 1980s, it wasn't quite as ubiquitious, but U2 rose to fame with explicitly political songs like the whole War album and Pride (In The Name Of Love).

There's little of that today. Rock is dead. Metal has never been all that politically conscious, but there were bands like C.O.C. Nowadays, most metal is focused on juvenile satanism/paganism/norse viking shit and anyway you can't understand the lyrics and anyway you definitely cannot sing along. You won't find protest anthems in metal.

2. Punk was only inconsistently political, and not always salutary in the lyrics, but punk offered something else -- a radically oppositional, liberational form of expression. The whole point of punk was to give a middle finger to the whole world, or at least all of Western society. In many ways, rock music in the 60s and 70s did the same. "Smoke weed" isn't exactly a protest message, but it isn't exactly not a protest message in a world of stifling conformity. And liberation itself birthed radical politics, or at least liberal politics. Make love, not war is trite and sort of silly, but it shows how cultural liberation can offer resistance to a repugnant status quo.

Punk is mostly dead and has been for a long time. What remains has mostly been stripped of oppositional content. I'm sorry, The Revolution Won't Be Sung By Green Day. It's not only oppositional lyrics, but also oppositional style. Green Day is bubblegum punk, more suited to frat parties than communes. And anyway, American Idiot was 20 years ago.

3. Hip hop? Man, how I long for the days of Public Enemy. I don't know much about the current state of the genre, but my sense is that the oppositional content has mostly been neutered in favor of lifestyle braggadocio. I don't know if it's quite "Money Cash Hos" but Drake ain't gonna be singing the revolution either. What rappers today are edgy in any socially conscious way? Kendrick Lamar has his moments, but his most famous song is just a diss track. One could argue that the rise of diss tracks -- which exist because they are tailor made for popular consumption -- was a major factor in the abdication of hip-hop of its role as "CNN of the ghetto." Anyway, Ice Cube ain't taking time away from his Budweiser ads and whatever else to launch a revolution.

4. So what we're left with is generic, smooth and unruffled pop music with little lyrical content and no musical adventurousness. Worse, music criticism has seemingly abandoned its traditional role in mainstreaming underground music (genres or bands) and has turned into celebratory jerkoffs of pop music. How many "music critics" debased themselves by favorably reviewing Sabrina Carpenter? Too many for my liking.

It's because music today is so pre-fab, so generic, so made-to-order that young people have so little political consciousness. Or, to put it differently, there is no sustain there. When I was exposed to radical ideas in my youth, I would then hop into my car and listen to "Vote With a Bullet" or "Fight the Power" or "Flowers of Guatemala." It kept me going. It kept the fire raging. And if not lyrically, in musical substance. Jimi Hendrix was rarely overtly political, but he offered a stinging rebuke of the war in Vietnam just by playing the national anthem on his guitar.

Thoughts? Some of y'all know modern hip hop better than I do.
 
I should add that this also perhaps addresses the social issues in liberal organizing. People sometimes ask, "where's the left's Charlie Kirk?" Where are the people who make liberal thought part of a person's identity? I would respond -- Chuck D was our Charlie Kirk. Rock concerts were our Charlie Kirk. Punk concerts. People would go, exchange ideas, nurture their sense of injustice. Yes, punk was not immune to cooptation by rightists (if you could even call it cooptation), but how many conservatives were hanging out at the first three Lollapaloozas?

Instead we get Taylor Swift singing to stadium sized crowds and there's no shared experience there. The girls exchange friendship beads or whatever ritual they have; it's fine, but it certainly doesn't organize anyone's life around an oppositional message. Nobody goes to a Taylor Swift concert and comes back ready to fight the man.
 
Thing is, punk and hip-hop originally functioned as outsider art. Like all other forms of art, once they became the dominant mode, they lost their bite.

There are still current punk/indie acts that are overtly political. Particularly Brits like IDLES, Fontaines D.C., Frank Turner, Sleaford Mods, Kneecap.

And of course there are the “old-guard” folks who’re still putting out music— like Pearl Jam, Billy Bragg, Ted Leo, jello Biafra, Against Me!/Laura Jane Grace, Dropkick Murphys, etc.

So the leftist/anti-fascist side of punk and hip hop still exists. It’s just buried a bit further underground now that punk and hip hop have been absorbed into mainstream pop music.
 
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I'm old and very likely don't appreciate what is going on. That said, the cost of tickets is now around median $135. With secondary market prices for top acts often over $1000. So likely significant selection in attendance at live events. One also wonders how Spotify impacts habits and tastes vs the previous model of radio and record stores - the same for short video the dominant media form replacing movies and TV.
 
Note: I've lived my adult life convinced of the ethical and political importance of music and art, and conformist versus non-conformist art in particular. I'm a follower of Adorno/Marcuse in that regard. Music can be a source of critical thinking, or a form of herding behavior. That's not exactly what I'm talking about here, but it's in the ball park.

Anyway: has our fascist moment been created in part because rock and hip-hop no longer function as oppositional voices?

1. I'm sure many posters can speak to this personally, but of course music was a huge galvanizing force behind the social movements. The anti-war movement, in particular, was inseparable from rock and roll, but obviously the civil rights movement too. Bob Dylan was extremely influential, as was Woody Guthrie. Edwin Starr (War); Barry Mcguire (Eve of Destruction). Fortunate Son. Other artists brought a more radical edge -- "Volunteers" (of America, Jeff Airplane), MC5 (all sorts of songs), etc. In the 1980s, it wasn't quite as ubiquitious, but U2 rose to fame with explicitly political songs like the whole War album and Pride (In The Name Of Love).

There's little of that today. Rock is dead. Metal has never been all that politically conscious, but there were bands like C.O.C. Nowadays, most metal is focused on juvenile satanism/paganism/norse viking shit and anyway you can't understand the lyrics and anyway you definitely cannot sing along. You won't find protest anthems in metal.

2. Punk was only inconsistently political, and not always salutary in the lyrics, but punk offered something else -- a radically oppositional, liberational form of expression. The whole point of punk was to give a middle finger to the whole world, or at least all of Western society. In many ways, rock music in the 60s and 70s did the same. "Smoke weed" isn't exactly a protest message, but it isn't exactly not a protest message in a world of stifling conformity. And liberation itself birthed radical politics, or at least liberal politics. Make love, not war is trite and sort of silly, but it shows how cultural liberation can offer resistance to a repugnant status quo.

Punk is mostly dead and has been for a long time. What remains has mostly been stripped of oppositional content. I'm sorry, The Revolution Won't Be Sung By Green Day. It's not only oppositional lyrics, but also oppositional style. Green Day is bubblegum punk, more suited to frat parties than communes. And anyway, American Idiot was 20 years ago.

3. Hip hop? Man, how I long for the days of Public Enemy. I don't know much about the current state of the genre, but my sense is that the oppositional content has mostly been neutered in favor of lifestyle braggadocio. I don't know if it's quite "Money Cash Hos" but Drake ain't gonna be singing the revolution either. What rappers today are edgy in any socially conscious way? Kendrick Lamar has his moments, but his most famous song is just a diss track. One could argue that the rise of diss tracks -- which exist because they are tailor made for popular consumption -- was a major factor in the abdication of hip-hop of its role as "CNN of the ghetto." Anyway, Ice Cube ain't taking time away from his Budweiser ads and whatever else to launch a revolution.

4. So what we're left with is generic, smooth and unruffled pop music with little lyrical content and no musical adventurousness. Worse, music criticism has seemingly abandoned its traditional role in mainstreaming underground music (genres or bands) and has turned into celebratory jerkoffs of pop music. How many "music critics" debased themselves by favorably reviewing Sabrina Carpenter? Too many for my liking.

It's because music today is so pre-fab, so generic, so made-to-order that young people have so little political consciousness. Or, to put it differently, there is no sustain there. When I was exposed to radical ideas in my youth, I would then hop into my car and listen to "Vote With a Bullet" or "Fight the Power" or "Flowers of Guatemala." It kept me going. It kept the fire raging. And if not lyrically, in musical substance. Jimi Hendrix was rarely overtly political, but he offered a stinging rebuke of the war in Vietnam just by playing the national anthem on his guitar.

Thoughts? Some of y'all know modern hip hop better than I do.
This doesn’t address your main point, but with regard to what you said about the rise of diss tracks in hip hop, diss tracks were a big part of hip hop since its infancy. Among other examples, you had diss tracks involving UTFO/Roxanne Shante/The Real Roxanne, Boogie Down Productions/Juice Crew/Marley Marl/MC Shan, Kool Moe Dee/LL Cool J, etc.
 
It's because music today is so pre-fab, so generic, so made-to-order that young people have so little political consciousness.

From the hip-hop standpoint, this is accurate. Younger listeners don’t want conscious rap at all and haven’t for a while

Maybe there is a larger discussion on the type of music (particularly when it comes to hip-hop) record labels are willing to promote. But I think most generally it still comes down to what is marketable

I also think that music is being listened to less in general by younger generations
 
I'm old and very likely don't appreciate what is going on. That said, the cost of tickets is now around median $135. With secondary market prices for top acts often over $1000. So likely significant selection in attendance at live events. One also wonders how Spotify impacts habits and tastes vs the previous model of radio and record stores - the same for short video the dominant media form replacing movies and TV.
I saw the Stones in the early 90’s. The seats were very good. On the turf about row 30, center-left of stage. The tickets were $35. That’s what, $80-85 in 2025?

Topic appropriate side note- In Living Colour was the opening act. In between songs they’d mention something about the oppressed and downtrodden who couldn’t afford $35 to feed their families much less see a show. The message fell flat. Now, I count myself among those who can’t afford (or rather refuse to accept reality) $135 to see a show.
 
There’s a fair amount of politically charged lyrics, if not exactly protest songs, to be found in Alt-country/ Americana. Steve Earle, James McMurtry, Kacey Musgraves, Chris Stapleton and so on.
 
From the hip-hop standpoint, this is accurate. Younger listeners don’t want conscious rap at all and haven’t for a while

Maybe there is a larger discussion on the type of music (particularly when it comes to hip-hop) record labels are willing to promote. But I think most generally it still comes down to what is marketable

I also think that music is being listened to less in general by younger generations
That last sentence saddens me. It is interesting that when I go to concerts these days— including featuring newer, younger artists— the crowd is noticeably older than the crowds at concerts I went to 20-30 years ago. At 50, I don’t feel out of place at concerts, and I see many people around my age and older. But if I saw a 50-year-old at a concert 20-30 years ago, I would be surprised to see such an “old” person there. Hell, 25-30 years ago, I would have thought it was a bit weird to see someone as old as 40 at a concert I went to.
 
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This doesn’t address your main point, but with regard to what you said about the rise of diss tracks in hip hop, diss tracks were a big part of hip hop since its infancy. Among other examples, you had diss tracks involving UTFO/Roxanne Shante/The Real Roxanne, Boogie Down Productions/Juice Crew/Marley Marl/MC Shan, Kool Moe Dee/LL Cool J, etc.
Well, sure. Hell, you could say that most of Rakim's lyrics were disses to everyone else in hip-hop.

But I think they gained more prominence later on, and specifically became the big singles and hits.
 
Thing is, punk and hip-hop originally functioned as outsider art. Like all other forms of art, once they became the dominant mode, they lost their bite.
This is a stripped down, message board version of Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man thesis: capitalism devoured everything once it realized it could commercialize anything.

While I am a fan of Marcuse and that book, I also don't see why it is inevitable. Public Enemy kept making political, oppositional music well into the 1990s.
 
This is a stripped down, message board version of Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man thesis: capitalism devoured everything once it realized it could commercialize anything.

While I am a fan of Marcuse and that book, I also don't see why it is inevitable. Public Enemy kept making political, oppositional music well into the 1990s.
This is a stripped down, message board version of Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man thesis: capitalism devoured everything once it realized it could commercialize anything.

While I am a fan of Marcuse and that book, I also don't see why it is inevitable. Public Enemy kept making political, oppositional music well into the 1990s.
I’ve read Marcuse and am a fan, so the allusion was purposeful.

I noted that there are plenty of “old-guard” folks who’re still making political music.
 
I also think that music is being listened to less in general by younger generations
I'm not sure this is correct. I think younger generations listen to music differently.

For instance, there's the rise of the monster playlist. I've seen people brag that their playlists are so big they never "have to" listen to the same song twice. That's just packaged narcissism. If you don't ever listen to the same song more than once, it never has time to make an impact. You just go onto the next song and what you're left with is an inchoate mass of sounds pinging through your mind.

I think this is why younger people don't go to concerts as much (but see Taylor Swift and various music festivals). They don't like bands. They like songs here and there.

Relatedly, I think, younger people tend to use music more instrumentally (hah hah, pun unavoidable but not intended). It's the background music for everything they do. But the fact that it's background again robs them of the chance to identify with the music in any way.
 
I also think that music is being listened to less in general by younger generations
Based on my kids and their friends, I don’t see that at all.

I do think a lot of Gen Z source their music from TikTok & listen to it on demand via Spotify, which cuts out the traditional “power brokers” from the music business. But I think music is very much a foundation of the human experience and I’d be shocked at any significantly large & diverse group of humans that didn’t listen to music on a material scale.
 
I’ve read Marcuse and am a fan, so the allusion was purposeful.

I noted that there are plenty of “old-guard” folks who’re still making political music.
Got it. And fair point about the old guard. I'm not sure why I mentally skipped over that part of your post. My bad.
 
Instead we get Taylor Swift singing to stadium sized crowds and there's no shared experience there. The girls exchange friendship beads or whatever ritual they have; it's fine, but it certainly doesn't organize anyone's life around an oppositional message. Nobody goes to a Taylor Swift concert and comes back ready to fight the man.
It's funny that you say this when the Swifties are one of maybe two artists' fan bases (the other being the Beyhive) in which you could actually make an argument that they could be turned into a social movement that would have any size and scale to it.

You are correct that folks don't go to a Taylor Swift concert and leave "ready to fight the man", but that's because Taylor has almost never turns directly political. (She occasionally gets kinda issue-oriented, but that's about it.) But Taylor certainly gets the Swifties ready to fight a man...just ask Matty Healy, John Mayer, Harry Styles, Joe Alwyn, & Jake Gyllenhaal (all exes of Taylor).

I'd say that Beyonce is in the same boat, huge fan bases which aren't political and are unlikely to be. But they are both social movements with lots of shared experiences among their fans.
 
It's funny that you say this when the Swifties are one of maybe two artists' fan bases (the other being the Beyhive) in which you could actually make an argument that they could be turned into a social movement that would have any size and scale to it.
But can they? I mean, sure, it's a big group of people, but what do they have in common besides Taylor Swift? Are there any principles, lifestyles, world views that they share? When a group is organized around a single artist, I think it's hard to make a movement.
 
Note: I've lived my adult life convinced of the ethical and political importance of music and art, and conformist versus non-conformist art in particular. I'm a follower of Adorno/Marcuse in that regard. Music can be a source of critical thinking, or a form of herding behavior. That's not exactly what I'm talking about here, but it's in the ball park.

Anyway: has our fascist moment been created in part because rock and hip-hop no longer function as oppositional voices?

1. I'm sure many posters can speak to this personally, but of course music was a huge galvanizing force behind the social movements. The anti-war movement, in particular, was inseparable from rock and roll, but obviously the civil rights movement too. Bob Dylan was extremely influential, as was Woody Guthrie. Edwin Starr (War); Barry Mcguire (Eve of Destruction). Fortunate Son. Other artists brought a more radical edge -- "Volunteers" (of America, Jeff Airplane), MC5 (all sorts of songs), etc. In the 1980s, it wasn't quite as ubiquitious, but U2 rose to fame with explicitly political songs like the whole War album and Pride (In The Name Of Love).

There's little of that today. Rock is dead. Metal has never been all that politically conscious, but there were bands like C.O.C. Nowadays, most metal is focused on juvenile satanism/paganism/norse viking shit and anyway you can't understand the lyrics and anyway you definitely cannot sing along. You won't find protest anthems in metal.

2. Punk was only inconsistently political, and not always salutary in the lyrics, but punk offered something else -- a radically oppositional, liberational form of expression. The whole point of punk was to give a middle finger to the whole world, or at least all of Western society. In many ways, rock music in the 60s and 70s did the same. "Smoke weed" isn't exactly a protest message, but it isn't exactly not a protest message in a world of stifling conformity. And liberation itself birthed radical politics, or at least liberal politics. Make love, not war is trite and sort of silly, but it shows how cultural liberation can offer resistance to a repugnant status quo.

Punk is mostly dead and has been for a long time. What remains has mostly been stripped of oppositional content. I'm sorry, The Revolution Won't Be Sung By Green Day. It's not only oppositional lyrics, but also oppositional style. Green Day is bubblegum punk, more suited to frat parties than communes. And anyway, American Idiot was 20 years ago.

3. Hip hop? Man, how I long for the days of Public Enemy. I don't know much about the current state of the genre, but my sense is that the oppositional content has mostly been neutered in favor of lifestyle braggadocio. I don't know if it's quite "Money Cash Hos" but Drake ain't gonna be singing the revolution either. What rappers today are edgy in any socially conscious way? Kendrick Lamar has his moments, but his most famous song is just a diss track. One could argue that the rise of diss tracks -- which exist because they are tailor made for popular consumption -- was a major factor in the abdication of hip-hop of its role as "CNN of the ghetto." Anyway, Ice Cube ain't taking time away from his Budweiser ads and whatever else to launch a revolution.

4. So what we're left with is generic, smooth and unruffled pop music with little lyrical content and no musical adventurousness. Worse, music criticism has seemingly abandoned its traditional role in mainstreaming underground music (genres or bands) and has turned into celebratory jerkoffs of pop music. How many "music critics" debased themselves by favorably reviewing Sabrina Carpenter? Too many for my liking.

It's because music today is so pre-fab, so generic, so made-to-order that young people have so little political consciousness. Or, to put it differently, there is no sustain there. When I was exposed to radical ideas in my youth, I would then hop into my car and listen to "Vote With a Bullet" or "Fight the Power" or "Flowers of Guatemala." It kept me going. It kept the fire raging. And if not lyrically, in musical substance. Jimi Hendrix was rarely overtly political, but he offered a stinging rebuke of the war in Vietnam just by playing the national anthem on his guitar.

Thoughts? Some of y'all know modern hip hop better than I do.
I think that a part of where you're going wrong is that you're equating short-term musical movements as somehow representative of mainstream music across time. Yes, each of the musical trends you discuss did happen, but they largely died out after a few years or they were rarely mainstream. Other than for a few years in the late-60s to early-70s, I don't think the mainstream of music has been terribly political.

I significant issue today to musicians taking on social issues in any significant way is the fractionalization of music into musical niches beyond the very, very thin layer of top 40 pop that still exists (which is often very generic and superficial, as you say) . With streaming services, it is possible for folks to dive more and more deeply into specific genres and subgenres of music they like and to largely ignore music they do not. Because of that, I'm not sure that hardly any musical artists or the music industry as a whole has the widespread reach to inspire people in any mass way.
 
But can they? I mean, sure, it's a big group of people, but what do they have in common besides Taylor Swift? Are there any principles, lifestyles, world views that they share? When a group is organized around a single artist, I think it's hard to make a movement.
I'd argue that the Swifties are a movement, but that it's almost completely apolitical because Taylor has been almost completely apolitical.

The principles involved are about getting through life and bad experiences with boys, having good friends you can rely on, putting the haters in their place, and creating one's own sense of place in the world. I'd say most of the principles are inwardly-focused rather than outwardly-focused, which is why it's never gotten terribly political.
 
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