Let’s start with Anderson’s calling card, his marmalade and butter voice, that helium huffed, frog throated, nasal register rap-singing towards Bethlehem. He’s the “McDonald’s commercial where a friend group composed of one token member of every minority and sexual orientation sits at a banquette together smiling and laughing over soft drinks and Big Macs as Travis Scott raps family friendly jingles over sterile 808s” version of Jack Johnson. It’s a kind of box-checking and reach-expanding that obfuscates how dangerous and at its core oppressive these corporations and the structures they represent are. When subsequently asked how she felt about the book’s message, as representation in advertising evolved over the years, Klein effectively said representation wasn’t the enemy, it was the capitalist beast itself, a chameleonic chimera that can graft any race, nationality or sexual orientation on its white source material, and in fact only grows stronger and more dangerous when it assumes Black and queer forms.
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In 1999, Naomi Klein released her seminal No Logo, a liberal campus classic about the insidious subliminal messaging in advertising and how it’s rotting our brains with implied messages of white cis hegemony. Andy Samberg once built an entire sketch around Jack Johnson and what he represented, and it’s typically broad and pretty stoned in a dumb way, but it does a decent job impressionistically grabbing what I’m finding is just beyond my grasp. Bush won reelection based solely off campaigning with hate speech against Gay Marriage. I think we hated the lie of endless chill in his music as Iraq burned and George W. And now looking back, this exercise is forcing me to ask myself why Jack Johnson bothered us so much. He was reviled by a certain strata of culture I was aspiring to be a part of, cool people. Much like Brandon Anderson, it would be very difficult for anyone to say what Jack Johnson, or his music, ever did to them. He made rote and hollow strummy campfire music about enjoying your life and being in love. All of this shit sounds cool, and my wife, the mother of my children, would certainly leave me in a heartbeat to make out with Jack Johnson once, but I can also tell you with 100% certainty, because I was there, that Jack Johnson’s music was not cool.
#If you let me see beneath your beautiful lyrics professional
Again, I did an incredible amount of background on this that didn’t survive a harsh edit, but let’s just say you lazily clicked on his Wikipedia page and skimmed the first sentence, you’d learn he is a multi-instrumentalist, actor, record producer, documentary filmmaker and is also a former professional surfer. When I went to college in the early aughts, we had this singer songwriter named Jack Johnson. Brandon Anderson is the “Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt” tattooed in script on America’s collarbone. So why do I find it so reprehensible? Perhaps it’s in that very lack of commitment on the part of the listener interacting with his work. It’s vacuuming the rug music that doesn’t fuck. A warm and remote pleasure center, something to put on in the background while you’re reheating leftovers. For many people he’s a pleasant distraction.
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But good people don’t often–in fact, from my experience, rarely–make great music, and Brandon Anderson is no exception. So, a better person than I am, because if I was really rich, to be completely honest, I’d spend all my money on keeping my wine fridge fully stocked with incredible shit, eat at Keen’s once a week, go to every Knick game even if they’re on the road, go to the movies everyday, and generally live out the philosophy Orson Welles espouses in The Third Man.
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Paak House, or The Brandon Anderson Foundation, a 501c3 non profit org that “aim(s) to support and create initiatives that uplift, engage and support the community through access to the arts, supplemental education and unique experiences to expand the imagination.” Paak Charity” I’m guessing you’d stumble across. I did a lot of research on background you won’t read here, but if you were lazy and wanted to just Google “Anderson. I’m quite sure he’s made music that has saved people from suicide, has given them hope in dark times, made a song that was the first dance at their daughter’s wedding, rescued their kitten from a tree, etc. Paak, born and referred to going forward as Brandon Anderson, is, on every level, an unobjectionable artist, and seemingly a nice guy. I am writing this because I decided I want to understand why exactly I hate the Oxnard-born singer/rapper Anderson.