SOUNDTRACK: TH1RT3EN-Tiny Desk (Home Concert) #146 (January 18, 2021).
I had never heard of TH1RT3EN before this Tiny Desk Concert. But I was hooked from the beginning. I liked everything about them. The fuzzy distorted guitar from Marcus Machado, the excellent delivery of Pharoahe Monch and especially the fascinating drumming and drum style of Daru Jones (look at the way his drums are set up!).
Both the moniker TH1RT3EN and supergroup were born out of a frustration with the veneer of American society that underestimates the darkness of white supremacy.
“I knew 5 years ago where we headed,” Monch shared over the phone. “Sure, we’ve always done socially and politically aware music, but I’m tired of this “love will win” nonsense. Love may be the most powerful vibrating force, but consciousness is spreading and it’s impossible not to be more aware of the evil that has kept the world in complete darkness. TH1RT3EN is the musical personification of me and my comrades at combat.”
“The Magician” is based around the riff from Yes’ “Roundabout.” Machado plays the riff throughout which I find much more interesting than if it was sampled. Monch’s lyrics are smart and pointed. There’s an incredibly fast rapping middle section with some amazing drumming. I really like his delivery.
Moinch says that that song is about a student who was bullied and grew up to be a school shooter. Ironically there hasn’t been any school shootings because we’re in the middle of a pandemic–a pandemic that has taken the lives of 250,000 Americans. And yet Americans reman more afraid of Black Lives Matter than of COVID 19.
TH1RT3EN recorded this set in August 2020, as evidenced by Monch’s interlude, this four-song set still channels the discontent outside our windows today. Shot in a padded “panic” room, this Tiny Desk (home) concert reflects the rage felt by this three-man battalion.
Monch continues “We are in need of cleansing and an exorcism. “Cult 45” opens with a sample of a horn riff. It’s quieter musically so it’s mostly vocals. When the guitar joins in it’s mostly to add free jazz noises along with some wild drumming.
“Scarecrow” returns to the slow dirgy, aggressive guitar sound behind some fast rapping.
He says he started the band because he wanted a bit more authentic aggression by finding these two musicians. And the set ends with “Fight” which has a nice big riff and crashing drums.
How’s this for an aptly aggressive verse
Burn a cross, water hose, dogs and nightsticks
Yeah, that’s what it used to be, see, they would usually
Just hang a nigga, fuck ’em
Now they don’t have the time to decorate the trees so they buck ’em
I’m going to have to check out this album.
[READ: February 28, 2021] You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey.
Amber Ruffin is a writer and comedian, most notably from “Amber Says What” on Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Amber Ruffin Show on Peacock. Amber is hilarious.
But Amber is also righteously angry about the way Black people are treated in America. Somehow she manages to take the most horrible things you can imagine and report about them with enough humor to make you listen and laugh and still get outraged.
This book is a collection of stories of racist things that happened to her sister Lacey. Lacey lives in Omaha, Nebraska, where they grew up. I don’t know anything about Nebraska or Omaha. Apparently Omaha is a big city and has sections that have a lot of Black folks. White people who are not from the city find the thought of going to Omaha scary. It also means that when Lacey gets jobs outside of Omaha she is typically the only Black person in the building.
Which seems to make all of the white people there think it is okay to say whatever crazy racist shit they want to say. But even outside of work, it seems like Lacey is a magnet for racist comments. Is it because she is tiny and good natured? Maybe. But she is a also a bodybuilder, so watch out.
About this book Amber says:
When you hear these stories and think, None of these stories are okay, you are right. And when you hear these stories and think, Dang, that’s hilarious, you are right. They’re both.
There are going to be a lot of time while you’re reading this book when you think There is no motivation for this action. It seems like this story is missing a part because people just aren’t this nonsensically cruel. But where you see no motivation, you understand racism a little more. It’s this weird, unprovoked lashing-out, and it never makes any sense. It’s why it’s so easy for people to believe the police when hey beat someone up–because no one would be that cruel just because the person was Black. But the are! So as you read this book, when you see there’s no motivation, know that there is: racism.
The Preface has an anecdote that really sets the tone for the rest of the book. Lacey paid at a store with a check. The checks had Black heroes on them. Lacey paid with one with Harriet Tubman on it. The cashier who had been very nice up to that point said “Wow you have checks with your picture on ’em.” There is then a hilarious juxtaposition of the check with Tubman and one with Lacey’s photo.
Amber contrasts her life in New Yorke City.
Everyone I work with is stark raving normal. We don’t have any crazy bigots (dumb enough to run up) and I’m no one’s first Black friend. Now I’m not saying no one ever says anything crazy to me–I’m still a Black woman in America–it’s just that we all know there are consequences for talking to me as if you’ve lost your mind.
But in the Midwest it is an unchecked tsunami of dumb questions and comments. People think it your job to answer “Why can’t I (insert the most nonsense shit you’ve ever head)?”
Lacey chimes in (in a different font) from time to time with things like that she’s happy her little sister is successful in New York:
where someone would get fired for out-and-out racism. I love that that really happens. Never seen it, but I love it. Like Santa Claus.
Amber ends the preface by saying
Hopefully the white reader is gonna read this, feel sad, think a little about it, feel like an ally, come to greater understanding of the DEPTH of this type of shit, and maybe walk away wit a different point of view of what it’s like to be a Black American in the twenty-first century.
And I did. Boy did I ever.
I work at a place where racism is not tolerated and I assumed that in the work place, that was the standard across the country. Obviously there are racists around (my next door neighbor is overt about it but I don’t talk to him since I know he has a gun and drinks a lot), but I don’t encounter it out and about. Although I’m certain that the Black folks I work with do encounter it.
So these stories are shocking to me. And the fact that they happen all the time and with such regularity I can’t believe there aren’t more Black people losing their shit and freaking out all the time.
These stories take place in Omaha (and thereabouts) between 1980 and 2020 (some were even added while the book was being finished).
And most of these stories happen at work.
When you’re at work and someone says something crazy, you gotta walk that tightrope. You don’t want to hurt their feeling so badly that they get you fired (getting a Black lady fired from your workplace is so easy you can do it accidentally), but you also don’t want to create an environment where you’re a sounding board for people’s gross racist thoughts.
Some fundamental racist things in the book: being told you look like someone you in no way look like but who is also Black. The book then shows four pictures of Lacey dressing like the person someone has mistaken her for: Whoopi, Oprah even Condoleezza Rice.
A common thing that stuns me, but maybe its because I don’t go shopping all that much is the number of clerks who tell Lacey she can’t afford something because she is Black. Including a car which she was already to pay for, but the car rep left her for a white family.
Here’s an example of how Amber can tell a horrifying story and make it funny
Lacey goes into a furniture store. There is no price tag on a table she likes. She finds an employee and asks how much the coffee table is
Wouldn’t you know t, this bitch says, “Expensive,” and walks away. I mean, we are all on Lacey’s side here, but that is a straight up hilarious thing to say,
Amber!
It is, though.
Yeah I guess you’re right.
Agree to both think it’s funny and hate it?
Agreed.
I won’t even get into the stories about the lack of availability of Black make up and haircare products except for the hilarious joke that a make up counter woman tried to do Lacey’s make up at the mall and used “a color called White Person in a Tanning Booth.”
I’ve written all of this and have only talked about up to page 14 of the book. So I’m just goin to jot down some section titles.
There’s a section of white guys hitting on Lacey online (stop saying chocolate!).
There’s cultural appropriation–why can’t my daughter dress like Pocahontas. Why can’t I dress like an African leader with a bone through her nose?
Here’s some other section headers
- Your name may be on the list, but because of your face I’ll never check.
- You’re wrong about the Black experience, let me, a white, tell you about it.
There are several hilarious and truly awful stories about JC Penney security (shame on you JC Penney).
And also about how people getting stereotypes wrong is somehow refreshing to hear the same stereotype but how on earth you come up with that one?
There’s also lots of quotes from racists
I never would have thought that, because normally Black women are serious all the time [Did you feel that? In one sentence we completely understood who this woman is.
Then there’s stories that are just plain horrible.
Lacey was treated abominably as a little girl at the hands of teachers, preachers and strangers. An art teacher ripped up Lacey’s art because she did not think that Lacey was talented enough to draw it.
- So called religious people telling Lacey that she can’t be part of a religious group.
- Religious speakers telling white people how scary Black people are.
- An honors teacher giving only Lacey harder and harder questions until she got one wrong and then mocking her for getting it wrong.
- A neighbor pulling a gun on 8 year old Lacey and her friends.
Jesus.
And then the work stories, oh the work stories.
Racism from the HR person! ten examples of explicit racism–from the HR person who is a piece of shit.
I’ve been listing most things as they happen in the book. Amber says
We’re not even half way though the book and so far we have really only been talking about stories that are okay to share with everyone.
There’s a ton more and some are funny and horrible and few are simply horrible.
And I didn’t even mention the chapter about the police.
The way the system treated their parents is just appalling.
Even though this book is not “about” their mom, their mom is the real hero of the book. The way she takes no shit and steps up for her kids against racist fools is awe-inspiring.
This book is very funny, but it’s also a real eye opener for anyone who thinks things are fine out there.
This book has certainly made me rethink the way I interact with all people. I mean, I am an ally but I see that I’ve done things in this book that I regret (nothing like these stories, just things I will be more ware of in the future). And really what better way to learn a lesson than by smiling when you’re being called out
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