Notes

Notes from the forest #9

Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show, a tribute to Terror Danjah, Ghost blogs and the Fediverse, plus a rediscovery of 90s jungle labels.

DJ Booga

14 Feb 2025 — 6 min read

Markkleeberger See / Photo: Robert Handrow

Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar's Road to the Super Bowl halftime show is a great read by Thomas Hobbs that provides important context for what happened last Sunday night. In the aftermath a lot of white people, like Noel Gallagher, didn't miss the chance to demonstrate their cultural blindness.

Cultural blindness is when we actually think that we have addressed cultural differences and that we understand the differences. Although the reality of it is that we do not understand the differences. While we may have this philosophy of cultural competence, it goes very little beyond this whole idea of philosophy. Blindness does not draw attention to differences. Blindness ignores differences. It does not embrace difference, it ignores it. So, at a cultural blindness stage, we might hear people say, for example, “I don't see color.” “I think that we're all the same.” “I think we should all be treated the same.” (...) There is a philosophy of equality and embracing difference, but when it actually comes down to acknowledging these experiences and these worldviews as valid, and just as important in setting aside our superiority, we have not quite gotten there yet. – Mindy Brooks-Eaves

Julia Thee Junglist Historian asked "Has anyone Black written about Kendrick's Superbowl performance or will I have to show my students one of the Tik Toks? I need a written up version of this." Nae Nae explained the deeper levels of Kendrick Lamar's halftime show in a two minutes tiktok and I copied the text for us, who are not like us, to better understand:

I know we all caught shade that Kendrick was throwing at Drake during the this halftime show performance. The A Minor necklace, bringing out Serena Williams (Drake stalked her publicly for years [AN]) for Crip walk, the sweet innocent but fugging diabolical smile on the camera during 'say Drake'. When I tell you I was giggling and kicking my feet when he said 'say Drake' ha ha ha ha. I know it was messy and petty and everything that we love about Kendrick Lamar but y'all to lock in because all truth no Jlo.

I need y'all to also understand the political messages that he was sending as well. Start off with Samuel L Jackson dressed as Uncle Sam saying 'Welcome to the Great American game'. Bitch he was not talking about football. The great American game is how our government wants us to behave: silent, complicit going along with whatever the fugg they're doing. We get into Kendick Lamar saying 'the revolution will be televised, you picked the right time but the wrong guy'. Essentially saying that he is not just gonna fall in line be complicit, he goes against what the government want.

Then we have Samuel L Jackson come back and he says that this is too loud, too reckless and too ghetto and ask Kendrick Lamar if he really knows how to play the game. Then Kendrick Lamar goes straight into humble. 'Sit down be humble', exactly what the government wants us to do. Then immediately after Kendrick Lamar stops doing what the government wants him to do, stop sitting down, stop being humble we see Uncle Sam come back and say 'deduct one life'. Please are we following along?! (Samuel L Jackson was an usher at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. [AN])

Then Kendrick Lamar teases 'Not Like Us' but doesn't perform it, he says 'I wanna perform their favorite song but you know the love to sue'. That was a dig at Drake because chile, you know he's on the phone with his lawyers as we speak. Also he says he's gonna slow things down meaning he's gonna fall back in line, be silent be complicit, not go against the government. When he brings out SZA the performance is chill and after that we see Uncle Sam comes back out and he says this is what America wants, nice and calm. Samuel L Jackson says 'you're almost there, don't mess this up' and then that's when 'Not Like Us' begins to start.

Before he gets into 'Not Like Us' he says some really important points, number one he says that there is a cultural divide - self explanatory. Number two he says '40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music'. If you're not familiar with the phrase '40 acres and a mule' that was a promise made to black people after the end of the American Civil War in which they were promised land and resources to help them build economically. This was a promise made by the government to black people which was broken which is why Kendrick Lamar says 'this is bigger than the music'. It points to the fact that the American government will lie to you which is why you should not trust them, why you should not be complicit, why you should not be silent.

I think the greater message that Kendrick Lamar was trying to convey is that we have to stand up. America is a game and we can not play the game in a way that Uncle Sam IE the government wants us to. Hope this helps, peace and love, talk to you later.

… maybe the revolution was televised maybe it wasn't but it sure sounded and looked sharp.

Terror Danjah tribute

Grime producer and co-founder of the Aftershock label Terror Danjah has died this week. Simon Reynolds has taken up the sad news and re-published his liner notes to the Gremlinz compilation that Planet Mu released back in 2009. Terror Danjah started out in the late 90s with Reckless Crew, an East London jungle drum and bass collective of deejays and MCs, and here's how he describes the influence of that time on his production:

Some of that comes from listening to a lot of Roni Size and Andy C and producers like that. Lots of abstracty sounds rushing about, coming out of nowhere. There's a sense of more life in the music. That’s what I do in my tunes. Drum and bass gave me ideas about layering sounds and placing sounds. But it also comes from studying music engineering at college, doing a sound recording course. I learned about mic'ing a drum kit and panning. You've got the pan positions in the middle of your mixing desk, and the crash should be left or right, the snares should be slightly panned off centre, the kick should be in the center. So you've got a panoramic view of your drum structure.

Derek Walmsley adds a different perspective on the producer that has gone too soon:

Terror Danjah’s place in grime might be seen alongside Gussie Clarke’s in reggae. Clarke did not produce too many albums of his own, but the beats he laid down for Gregory Isaacs, Shabba Ranks and others completely redefined how reggae was made and what dancehall and ragga would come to be. In a few months, everyone else needed to get with the programme or be stuck in the past. Terror Danjah posed the same question in the early 2000s.

I discovered his music later on Hyperdub in the context of the post-dubstep funky era. My personal fave tune of Terror Danjah is Pro Plus (feat. D.O.K.).

Ghost blog and the Fediverse

If you're interested in getting a sense of what's coming this year with Ghost (this blog runs on the open source publishing platform), the Fediverse and how this might eventually work, I recommend John O'Nolan's talk at FOSDEM 2025. Here's the recorded video of "Networked Journalism in the Fediverse" with a short Q&A session at the end. I encourage artists in particular to look at the potential of the Fediverse development and start thinking about how to emancipate themselves from the big corporate social media platforms in the long term.

Three jungle labels rediscovered

I'm talking about Bear Necessities (1992-2002), Genetic Stress (1995-2001) and Narcotix (1995-2007). A Dogs On Acid thread lead me to the Just Another Label Bandcamp page where the catalogs of these labels exists as digital albums. I've got a lot of records from that period and was just happy to discover that they were available digitally. Producer pseudonyms on Bear Necessities were a big thing: Strategy = Aquasky, Tight Control = A-Sides, Legacy = Total Science (love Data Transfer). Q Project aka Acess (one half of Total Science) released some absolute stunning non-dnb breakbeat tunes on Narcotix. If you check out Genetic Stress, there's a gem called Dilemma - Spring Box (Matrix Remix) that you should definitely give a listen.