Kendrick Lamar and Drake, two musical heavyweights, have spent the past week trading lyrical jabs about their careers and messy personal lives. But while the press pours over their every poisoned word, a powerful protest song has cut through all the smoke and noise, squarely posing the question: “why is nobody talking about the genocide in Gaza?”
‘Hind’s Hall’ – a reference to a building at Columbia University, renamed by occupying students to honour six-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab, killed by the IDF – is an anthem for the pro-Palestine protests that have swept US campuses.
In under three minutes, rapper Macklemore hails the protestors; dismantles imperialist complicity in Israel’s crimes; and skewers the music industry’s conspiracy of silence.
Imperialist complicity
Despite having made politically conscious music in the past, Macklemore is generally dismissed as a mediocre MC, whose songs verge into the sentimental and cringe-worthy. Yet he bursts out of the gate on ‘Hind’s Hall’, outlining his core message in the opening bars:
“What is threatenin’ about divesting and wantin’ peace?
The problem isn’t the protests, it’s what they’re protesting
It goes against what our country is funding.”
Macklemore tugs on the thousand threads tying big business interests to the political establishment, and namechecks influential Zionist lobbies (“Politicians who serve by any means, AIPAC, CUFI, and all the companies”).
He then aims at the police, who have brutally broken up peaceful encampments across the US (“Actors in badges protecting property”), highlighting the real character of bourgeois legality:
“[If] occupyin’ the quad is really against the law
And a reason to call in the police and their squad
Where does genocide land in your definition?”
The accompanying music video exposes the imperialists’ cynical double standards, with footage of Ukrainian Prime Minister Zelenskyy getting a rapturous reception in Congress, juxtaposed with the destruction in Gaza, as Macklemore raps:
“All the men that you murdered, and then we see how you spin it
Who gets the right to defend and who gets the right of resistance.”
The third verse addresses slanderous allegations thrown at the student protestors (“We see the lies in ’em, Claimin’ it’s antisemitic to be anti-Zionist”), despite the prominence of anti-Zionist Jews in the encampments (“I’ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters out there and ridin’ in solidarity and screamin’ ‘Free Palestine’ with them”).
Where was this unapologetic response from left reformists like Jeremy Corbyn, slandered as antisemitic by the capitalist establishment?
Similarly, while the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders meekly call for a Biden vote to ‘stop Trump’, Macklemore rejects such lesser-evilism with contempt:
“The blood is on your hands, Biden, we can see it all
And fuck no, I’m not votin’ for you in the fall.”
HIND’S HALL. Once it’s up on streaming all proceeds to UNRWA. pic.twitter.com/QqZEKmzwZI
— Macklemore (@macklemore) May 6, 2024
Tell the truth
Macklemore reserves his venom for the capitalist music industry at the back end of the track, calling out overwhelming focus on the ‘beef’ between Drake and Kendrick (both seen as more ‘credible’ artists), while a genocide unfolds, with the full connivance of the US imperialists:
“What happened to the artist? What d’you got to say?
(…)
I want a ceasefire, fuck a response from Drake.”
Trotsky once wrote that art must tell the truth, and reflect what is most vital in the world.
While multi-millionaires trade insults about Ozempic and their shoe sizes, and pampered cultural elites dress up like Hunger Games villains at the Met Gala – where is the anger? Where are the artists telling the truth about Israel’s crimes, and how the bourgeois state is silencing those who object?
It is an indictment of the vapid degeneracy of bourgeois culture that, with a few exceptions (Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar acceptance speech comes to mind), there has been a total absence of commentary on the burning issue of today.
This short, relatively simple track is no technical hip-hop masterclass. And we could nitpick about how Macklemore frames the oppression of the Palestinians, which he ultimately attributes to ‘white supremacy’, rather than capitalism.
But we commend the integrity of any artist using their platform to soundtrack the biggest student protest since the Vietnam War.
What is the purpose of art, if not to voice burning indignance at injustice?
“What if you were in Gaza? What if those were your kids?
If the West was pretendin’ that you didn’t exist
You’d want the world to stand up, and the students finally did.”
