J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – December ’10 #13: “Life In The City” by Michael Franti & Spearhead

This is a daughter creeper – or a song that she listens to and has run up on my Krupert count. When I realized it was still on my gaypod, I took it off, but decided it best to write about it anyways because I have nobody to impress here. And my daughter likes me writing about her music. Except I don’t like Michael Franti music much. It’s like Wesley Willis got on brain meds and started making happy music for tips in a tourist district somewhere in San Diego.
I know there are people who are even friends with me who think there is nothing better than Michael Franti music, and it’s so positive and chill, and that’s great. But I do not buy it was world music or even something enjoyable beyond like two songs. He has like three songs basically that he repeats over and over. I also do not think the rest of the world is like this, all chill and happy and sunshine beams everywhere except your eyeball. Shit man, I just read tonight how Jamaican chicks used to take chicken pills that they give to fatten up chickens to make themselves have rounder bottoms and wider hips. And now everybody is using cake soap to bleach their skin, like literally bleach it, and there was a picture of Vybz Kartel and he looked like he had a disease. But it was him doing it on purpose. And yet he made “Thank Yuh Jah” last year, which was The Song of 2010, and it was world music I guess, and came from reality where you rub bleach soap on your body and wear clothes that look expensive but you probably got from an outlet store and you did some nasty things but hey we all do. That’s the rest of the world. Hell, that’s here too. I don’t understand this easy-going world music vibe at all. Where is this fucking chill ass barefoot world?
I used to have the first Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy 12-inch back in the day, “Television – the Drug of the Nation” and was into them, which was Franti’s old band. Bought the vinyl in that record store that used to be on Grace Street in that building that ended up being the Red Light Inn strip club, which that place may not even be there anymore either, as they clean up that area for VCU to be a more fucking chill ass barefoot thing itself, all easy to go to college and get in debt and not be hassled by junkies and bikers and redneck strippers and sketchy black dudes and the beautiful assortment of homelesses. And Dirt Woman selling flowers. Man, that’s my fucking problem with world music and Michael Franti and chill ass barefoot utopias – not that it’s annoying or anything, but that it’s not as beautiful as the real world around us, even with all it’s flaws and imperfections and fucked up scars and crazy folks. This real world is all sorts of freaky and scary and fucked up and yet there’s still all sorts of little slivers of beauty, either as a collected landscape or a single item, and that’s what makes it perfect. Michael Franti sounds like a soundtrack for gentrifying the perfect real world we already have, and getting a new wine shop and maybe a boutique or some other high end named place selling thrift store type things but a very select inventory at a very select price. Fuck that.
Still though, if I was in a Michael Franti mood, this would be the song I played first, then another would come on and I’d be like, “ugh… Michael Franti.” But it always takes that second song at least.
STEAL “Life In The City”
NEXT UP: Big K.R.I.T. is still here!