This is a remix of songs of three musical icons in Black communities in both the USA and Jamaica. All three are deceased but continue to engage the imaginations of various publics the USA and Jamaica. No doubt the creator of this remix saw similarities among all three men: black, male, coming from oppressed classes, music that dealt with themes around violence, machismo, and also the interrelatedness of Reggae and Hiphop music, the latter being influenced by or arising out of the former. Even though Bob is from an earlier generation and Biggie and Tupac are from a later one, there is a continuity in terms of the issues addressed in their music, more so Tupac with this concern for the sufferings of black youth in American society. Bob was equally interested in liberation struggles of the poor in Third World countries. This remix creates a space with respected artists from different generations and culture meet and dialogue about issues of concern in Bedstuy, Brooklyn, especially the killing and dying of the young, black male. Even more important, I think the remix highlights the suffering of black mothers who lose their sons to violence, to the streets in untimely deaths. Tupac and Biggie too, died untimely deaths and their mothers publicly grieved and mourned. In using Bob’s song from the 70s, the remixer is able to create a new product and connections across many years and generations, highlighting that things have changed but in many ways are still the same.

The Gregory Brothers’ “Autotune the News” was a minor sensation last summer (the one linked above got some airplay on broadcast media; I found out about them when they were featured on Rachel Maddow’s show). Their stuff works through a sort of arbitrary juxtaposition and decontextualization; they take segments of video and audio that were originally created in purportedly serious contexts — news reports, debate shows, c-span — and craft them into a catchy, funny song, without much regard for the original political content of their material (or rather, through a deliberate and carefully maintained disregard of the political content).

In interviews the Gregory Brothers have noted that the decision of who is or is not frequently featured on Autotune the News is almost entirely driven by whether the figures’ voice can be autotuned into something catchy sounding, so for example Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, who apparently have voices that are easy to make soulful, show up much more often than croaky-voiced Dick Cheney, Keith Olberman gets about ten appearances for each one by Rachel Maddow, and, if one were to judge by Autotune the News, Katie Couric is the only network newscaster in America. Although occasionally political commentary / content from the AtN creators will slip through (for example, the line “I thought this bill was about the climate” in the above video), this is always brief; the political point of AtN is that it’s possible to read news broadcasts as being a series of manipulatable sounds rather than as “serious” political discourse. Frequently AtN episodes will start with the AtN creators green-screened into a Sunday debate show set, shouting “BORING!” over the original, pre-autotuned audio; the twin messages I see here are that:

• The political discourse on television is so debased (or whatever) that turning it into a song is actually more useful than listening to it, or, alternately,
• The content doesn’t matter, or at least the raw lulzy fun of repurposing something serious is valid no matter how important the content is

Although the Gregorys are most known for the AtN series, one way they thwart readings of their work that focus solely on the “American political discourse is lame” message is through some of the other videos they have on Youtube, featuring autotunings of acknowledged “great speeches” (for example, they’ve done autotunings of JFK and MLK Jr. speeches).