August Greene

Yo!

Y'all know I love the Tiny Desks.  My little brother sent me a link to this Tiny Desk from a new "super" group that features Common.  IT IS DOPE.  Sometime Common tires me out - every song is so deep and packed with lyrics and meaning that I just long for some fun now and again.  I need a banger in the midst of the wokeness.  Because I'm shallow.  But, even though I'm not incorporating this into my usual Quick Hits posts, I just wanted to throw this one up here and make sure you saw it.

The opener, "Black Kennedy" was what my brother told me I needed to hear, but all of them are pretty solid.  That track is good, dude.  I just wish that Common could pair his deep thoughts with rugged beats or something to bounce to instead it always being NPR-ready jazzhands beats.  That second song, the lady’s verse is damn good.  I love Tiny Desk concerts.  I’d pay at least $5 to get to go to all of them.

And the lyrics are excellent.  I’m bummed that no one has fully annotated the lyrics yet – Genius gets rap nerds who want to give backstory and details about lyrics, which I think would be cool on this one.  https://genius.com/August-greene-black-kennedy-lyrics.  For example, “Dihann Carroll-like,” in reference to his grandmother who liked sequins.  What is that about?  There are some annotations on this, but very little yet.  (had to go look it up, she was an actress on Dynasty, who was the first elegant, strong black woman on TV.  “More than three decades later the feisty Deveraux still pops up in Internet memes, bedecked in sequins, her masterful side-eye lending silent commentary to current events.”  Cool track.  Check it out.