The assignment was simple in its design. BRANDON SODERBERG asked if people would like to create a drop or several commemorating a track from Jay Dee’s album ‘Donuts’. I already knew which song I wanted to discuss. I love the track called ‘Anti-American Graffiti’. I also knew I wanted to make a video that used the song as its soundtrack. I hope I did a good job of transferring my thoughts on the track with the images that I clipped and pasted together.
The song is almost like a marching anthem in the way that the drum kicks keep their time. I see an army stretching across the horizon goose-stepping in time. It isn’t a human army though. Well, not all human. They are cyborgs. Stepping on human skulls strewn about the landscape. Even though the human life has been muted there is still something lively about these man-machines and their march. This is the sad future of this planet.
In the last few weeks my thoughts have been on the war that the U.S. is still embedded in across the Middle East. From Afghanistan to Iraq and the tacit support and endorsement in Gaza there is so much blood on our hands as American citizens. I understand that everything that I enjoy as an American comes from the real sacrifice that is made by the U.S. military personnel. All the while their rate of suicide skyrockets to unimagined heights. Can the president wrest a control of this precedent?
When Jay Dee passed away in 2006 the country was almost three years deep in the tumult of Iraq and only six months removed from the disaster that was Hurricane Katrina. Jay Dee saw a world that was folding in on itself as if it had eaten a cosmic Black hole. Maybe we deserve this fate? At some point someone will have to take the weight and bear the burden for all of our complicit sin. With each generation the penalties and interest increase. Will our grandchildren even know what sunlight looks like?
Rest in peace James J.Dilla Yancey. Donuts forever.
J Dilla – Anti-American Graffiti from dallas penn on Vimeo.
Have you checked out Illa J, Dilla’s baby brother? He has a new joint out on Delicious Vinyl with J Dilla Beats….
You should check it!
on the real though…on all the music I grew up on and currently listen to…i don’t really miss dilla.
sure ATCQ material considered…but ehhh…i can get by
Happy Birthday, Dilla Dog!
Not only did dude construct amazing music, he also demonstrated how to spit fire over his beats!
That’s why I can’t be a soldier or a police man. You stop getting to be a person and start controlling those who still are.
I love DOOM, but I’m not sure he did this Dilla beat justice with Sniper Elite. Thoughts?
Dallas,
Im feeling your vision man. Ive always loved this song as well–never thought about it on this tip though. It works for sure and has added new meaning for me. Good shit mang.
Chief, I feel you on that–Im so used to all these Dilla tracks by themselves that I generally am not feeling when people spit over them. Although I hear that Mos rocks over that Only One Can Win beat on his next album–Ill be looking for that.
That was sick, Dallas! My favorite track off that record for sure. Love the ‘Cyborg Army’ visual.. That song is so cold n bleak, but I also feel Dilla’s underlying faith in humanity beneath the ice cold guitars and drums. He brings the soul on the low so to speak. Crazy chop of that sample too. and FUCK THE POLICE!
strange time we live in folk