Slow news day, slow news day. But there are a few musical goodies circulating that are pegged to Martin Luther King Day. On Friday, I mentioned that local producer Jon Kwest released the moombahton edit “Drum Major,” which applies some 108 bpm to King’s haunting “Drum Major Instinct” sermon.
D.C. rapper yU included the empowerment jam “I Believe” on his strong 2011 album, The EARN, but his label Mello Music Group sent out a reminder this morning that the song has some serious MLK vibes. In it, yU rhymes:
I draw from dreams. Cuz they’re talking to me at night
Loud and clear, and I never bow to fear. Greater
Thoughts I have right now, happen some years later
The weird way the universe works,
trust is the crust of life’s pie, I succeed because I believe
Rousing! But maybe not as rousing as this, a vocal-only edit of Marvin Gaye‘s classic “What’s Going On” that Beauty Pill‘s Chad Clark shared on Soundcloud a year ago. He reshared it today. “It is a file that is passed around a lot,” he writes. “It’s not hard to find. It’s on the internet. It is common for music producers to share it with each other as an example of the magic of performance.” That’s not the reason he’s sharing, Clark says:
I am putting this up on our Soundcloud today for obvious reasons. Today is MLK Day. You have the day off. It’s nice to have a day off. But take a couple of minutes to enjoy this lovely song anew and think about what this day means. Tolerance, love, courage, empathy. Try to imagine a horrible world where people like this don’t come along to rescue us all from our ignorance and our gnashing teeth.