Hey anybody here remember the Wham Rap? Is this song for or against leaning on welfare when you’re young and sexy? I literally can’t tell. The lyrics about how people should not do things they do not enjoy, those feel earnest. But the characterization of the narrator, who advocates living off of welfare programs, is as selfish, looking out for number one. It’s ironic people see social welfare as greedy when the main reason rich people don’t want to pay a reasonable tax to support society is because of absolutely inarguable baldfaced greed. People “on the dole” need food and shelter. Rich people don’t need a second yacht. They just fucken don’t. Anyway, dubious politics aside, it’s a bop. Glad I remembered it exists.
One could make a whole study of references to welfare in music, and what they say about social perspectives. Roots Manuva had a song called Mind 2 Motion with the line “Social survivor still scratching on, I’ll pay that money back when I get my hit song.” This is eminently reasonable. Rely on what you need when you are needy, pay your taxes when you are not. And yet, I heard that he’s just another boring conservative greedlord. Unsurprising if true. One day Biggie Smalls was talking about how he lived in the projects and suffered poverty, feels blessed by his wealth. The next he was literally saying “fuck the world, don’t ask me for shit.”
Sticking to the UK for another moment, commie rapper Bobbi from QELD and Pavlov’s House reliably hates on working for a living. Warnings for flashing lights, doom-tinged chorus, and tankie feelz. Austerity politics will get you feelin’ that kind of way.
The USA has its own communist rappers. Boots Riley from The Coup is the number one guy on that scene, blowing up the World Trade Center on an album cover before that became unpopular for reasons. But on the topic of social survivin’, I’d like to quote Killer Mike’s guest rap on The Coup’s WAVIP: “I’m over here with the welfare recipients, we ain’t ever payin’ but we stay gettin’ shit, I am with the people on the bottom fella, we gon’ riot loot rob ’til we rich as Rockefeller… The one percent better learn this shit is VIP, if we don’t nut up everybody gonna D-I-E.”
There are more low-key ways to say Fuck a Job. In Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s seminal extremely hateable dogshit buttrock classic “Takin’ Care of Business,” the drunk guy on the mic sez, “If you ever get annoyed, look at me I’m self-employed, I love to work at nothing all day.” I don’t know why I find that more offensive than intentionally offensive punk rock on the subject. All he’s saying is “get an easy job.” Could be worse. I just don’t like the genre. Speaking of punk rock on the subject, little known Desperate Bicycles had a song about making rock, with a very likeable message. Backup vocals by the literal child on the drums. “It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it.”
As for the intentionally offensive punk rock on the genre, the Dead Milkmen have two strong examples. Nutrition is an all-around classic, covered by other bands, well-liked, and a good tune. It captures the vibe of feeling like you were born to work but just don’t wanna, feeling simultaneously petulant and ashamed about it. A lesser tune with a more didactic message, just literally “fuck working,” is Chaos Theory, from a later album. “I used to get up and do my job, now I enjoy doing nothing better, I think I’ll go bum around, I think I’ll enjoy this lovely weather. Maybe some day there’ll be a revolution, maybe some day we’ll have meaningful jobs, until that day I’m gonna be lazy, I’m not gonna be no working slob. I am the god of unemployment, the antichrist of the american dream, I used to fight for church and country, but now I don’t give into the corporate schemes.”
That’s just being a bitch about it. Not saying that’s my number, but I did spend a few years on unemployment at one point, and spent a lot of time back then walking around under blue skies. Like the part in One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer when George’s landlady saw him leanin’ up against a post… This could go on forever.
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Edit to Add: How in the fuck did I forget Agenda Suicide by The Faint? Content Warning: The Obvious, Generally Grim as Balls.
I was still a student when the Wham Rap came out, but spent a couple or three years on the dole after I graduated. I am now one of the 10 percent (bottom end and not due to anything I did), but I haven’t forgotten getting all my clothes in charity shops, and my knickers being little more than holes. And the time the DHSS decided I was ‘living’ with someone as opposed to just sharing a house I literally had to empty my purse on the counter each week for the benefit officer to count how few pennies I had from the ’emergency’ rate I was on. And still I was lucky, in those days when you won an appeal against a decision you got all of the benefit you should have been paid back, not like now. Anyway . . .
A lot of artists of all sorts from the UK spent the early part of their careers on the dole, along with a lot of people who never made it and ended up in a ‘proper’ job. It is far harder for young artists today, you have to prove you are actively seeking work to qualify for benefits. Personally I think the whole system is crazy, quite apart from the fact that a country as rich as the UK can afford to feed and house al of the people that need help, you can’t tell who will make it as an artist and I do wonder how many people are lost to the creative world because they just had to get a ‘real’ job. And it’s been proved over and over again (my friend) the universal income is more efficient in all ways so cruelty is the point and that really doesn’t sit well with me.
TL;DR I waffle.
Oh I don’t mean people who have real jobs can’t be artists, just that it limits how much art they can do – as I am sure you know GAS.
u and i are on the same page here, jazzlet. every day I feel the limits of my freedom as an artist and it hurts. one of these aeons, i’ll be free. we’ll see what’s left of my brain by then.