“A lot of y’all are still soundin’ like last year,” Drake raps on his critically acclaimed mixtape, So Far Gone, before going on to say that the rap game needs change, and he’s the cashier. So Far Gone, following in the wake of Kanye’s 808s and Heartbreaks, might be the first “post-808s” album. As such, it shares not only its quirky, minimalist beat selection, but many of its lyrical themes.
Both ’Ye and Drake rap about being rich and famous, about the freedom that money can buy in our society. Many of us relate to this—we are not rich, are not famous, and see all around us that few people, in the absence of fame or riches, are able to acquire anything but a small measure of freedom. When Kanye and Drake rap about these things, then, they speak to the radical demand inside all of us that we be able not simply to exist, but to enjoy the best that life has to offer.
But there’s a flipside to the freedom Kanye and Drake rap about: What kind of freedom is it that money can buy? For both of these artists, that freedom is lacking in some way, or marked by serious doubts. On the song “Welcome to Heartbreak” for example, Kanye raps, “my friend showed my pictures of his kids / and all I could show him was pictures of my cribs.” For his part, Drake combines these two themes—the meaninglessness of materialism and the pursuit of wealth—seamlessly on the track “Successful.” “Inside,” he says in a moment of stunning insight, “I’m treadin’ water, steady tryin’ to swim to shore,” only to follow these words by saying, “I’m on a shoppin’ spree to get whatever is in store.”
Although some see only the flash and glamour in Kanye or Drake, the meaninglessness of success and money without social content always lurks behind the scenes. In other words, both artists have reached the top of the game; both have more money than they could ever spend, and yet where is true friendship? Where is the fellowship of the folks that knew you before you had anything, the folks you could truly confide in? If all this money can’t buy happiness, where are we supposed to find it in our society? Can we ever find it with society structured the way it is?
In both of these artists, these contradictory ideas exist in delicate tension with each other. It is this tension that makes Kanye in particular such a compelling public figure, as well as the fact that, at any moment, the balance could shift and transform into a new reality. In those moments, great works of art emerge, alongside decisive turning points in history.
Such a new reality emerged before our eyes March 4, when students and workers at college campuses and in communities from California to Vermont participated in a national day of action to defend education. That day, thousands of people waged battles large and small against attacks on education such as tuition hikes, early “retirement” programs for teachers and staff, out-of-date textbooks at high schools, wage stagnation and more work for fewer employees, and combined these demands with broader demands for money for education (not wars abroad), as well as democratic control of universities by students and workers.
Before March 4, debates among activists were dominated by two strategies. One sought to hold rallies, make dazzling speeches and wrap everything up by dinner. This approach sought to contain ordinary people’s rebelliousness within official, approved channels. A second approach sought to hold heroic actions—freeway occupations and so on—without organizing among oppressed communities for the long haul. The latter approach substitutes the action of the few for the actions of the many. Neither had much faith in ordinary people’s willingness, based on a clear analysis of strengths and weaknesses, to bravely face school administrators and even the police.
March 4 swept away the stalemate between these two positions. A new reality emerged that we can no longer evaluate using the tired categories of the past.
In the Bay Area, a thousand demonstrators marched from the campus of University of California at Berkeley down Telegraph Avenue into Oakland for a rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland. In Seattle, a crowd of as many as 700 students and workers at the University of Washington marched across campus. At one point they took over an adjacent street, shutting it down while they shouted their demands. At the University of Texas at Austin, a crowd of 200 protestors chose to march to the president’s office as a show of strength, taping their demands on the entrance to the budget office when confronted with a locked door.
Through these and similar actions across the country, students and workers created a new terrain of struggle that we should welcome even as we seek to defend and extend that terrain. These militant, direct actions, taken by broad layers of students and workers in the heat of struggle, created the new reality we live in today.
And a good thing, too. The game needed change.
March 4 was the cashier.
Michael Stauch is a second-year Ph.D. candidate in history. His column runs every other Friday.
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