Mark America

End of the World, or End of Media Oligopoly?

Andrew Breitbart famously admonished conservatives that “politics is downstream of culture.” His observation was shrewdly accurate, inasmuch as the titans of media have been using popular culture on behalf of their invariably leftist talking points and agenda for decades.  People who don’t adhere to leftist politics are generally banished from popular culture, left to toil away on more obscure websites, or in AM talk radio.  As the geniuses who want to shove electric vehicles down our throats have made plain, there will be no AM talk radio because they’re unable to make AM radio work with their electric vehicles due to electromagnetic noise created by their vehicles.  They intend to limit your media sources, but AM radio has remained the one place they haven’t been able to conquer, despite numerous attempts.  They will therefore destroy it.  Now enter the segment of the media they may hate most of all, because at present, it remains out of their complete control: The Internet.  When non-leftist culture launches from the Internet to assault one of their pillars of media dominance, in this case, music, they’re none too happy about it.  Country performer John Rich and hip-hop independent performer Tom MacDonald have launched an all-out assault on the multi-billion dollar music media empire, and they’re succeeding, despite all the attempts to bury them. Why? How are they doing it?  They have a message that is permeating popular culture, and crossing boundaries between music genres.  If conservatives ever hope to vanquish the left politically, they need first to gain at least a foothold in popular culture beyond talk radio.  By assaulting the beaches of big music, the duo may be creating an opportunity to recapture some of that imprisoned cultural real estate we’ve long given up for lost.

Last week, they dropped a new video into the marketplace, and it’s raising eyebrows, but it’s also getting toes tapping and people singing and rapping along.  That’s right.  My wife said the song may be an actual “ear-worm.”  More than that, however, it offers to become a cultural ear-worm.  It’s speaking to many, and when combined with the captivating, entertaining video produced by MacDonald’s girlfriend, Nova Rockafeller, the overall effect is piercing.  It cuts directly through the mainstream pop-culture narratives, directly to the heart of our national, and more broadly, Western, cultural struggles.  Here’s the chorus:

“We stood on top of mountains, we’ve been to space before,

we had our dogs in houses, we dug up dinosaurs.

We built those bombs you’re dropping, we fought in all your wars.

Now that the sky is falling, what did we do it for?”

Here’s the entire video, from Rumble:

While the video is certainly compelling, and the music certainly works well, what I find interesting is that the two performers are very different people, who generally serve up completely different sorts of music.  That they blended hip-hop with country in a coherent, cohesive way, while pushing what one would have to consider a unifying message is certainly attention-getting.  On Wednesday evening, the two hosted a talk on YouTube that was equally interesting.  To listen to the two, you’d have a hard time discerning their underlying viewpoints, despite the wildly different look of the two.  The message:  Appearance is only skin-deep.

While a little lengthy, this livestream was recorded and is on MacDonald’s youtube channel:

I expect that a fair number of people in this audience are more familiar with Rich than with MacDonald.  That said, it’s worth noting that MacDonald is a social-commentator via rap, and he’s said plenty of very controversial things in the past.  The mainstream music media paints him as “offensive,” but given what I’ve seen out of modern popular music, it challenges credulity to argue anything he’s ever said could be more offensive than Cardi B’s “WAP,” which I will not further discuss here… or anywhere.

Here’s one of MacDonald’s previous videos, and I must admit, one that I have actually enjoyed:

Now, if you wonder how much affect all of this could have in popular culture, you need to examine a genre on Youtube with which you may not be familiar: The reaction video.

Surf over to YouTube and search for the following:  “End of the World Reaction.” Be prepared to have your eyes opened by the way in which music and music videos have an effect on people, and through them, the culture at large.

“End of the World” is available on Amazon and iTunes.