raptoravatar asked: Thanks for the nuanced take on MIA. As usual, I find myself envying your level of insight. Something I was curious about, and maybe this is an overreaching question on my part, is how you feel your own connections to a country that's experienced more than it's share of political violence and material deprivation have informed how you process works of art (or whether it's even a factor).
Thanks a ton! So I have a long and complicated response to this question, which I might post later. But the short answer is that most of my background consists of pretty common middle-class and midwestern-American stuff, so I doubt there’s any profound, across-the-board difference in perspective happening.
But I can totally tell you that the last piece of music I reacted to primarily as A Child of East-African Immigrants was definitely this one, by Das Racist. Forget this critical-thinking nonsense: if you put together a hilarious track about the kinds of Americans who frequently get asked where they’re from, I am going to like that track. I am going to walk home drafting my own verse to that track. Half of it will be about the difference between looking like Gandhi and looking like Ben Kingsley, but still. God job hitting me where I live.
