words.
"Whatever they are as creative forces and all-around tastemakers, the Carters also embody black wealth in the 21st century. It’s a main subject of Jay Z’s raps on the less-than-brilliant Magna Carta Holy Grail, and the mise-en-scène of Beyoncé’s “visual album.” (It’s easier to see luxury than to hear it, though it’s definitely present in her beats, too.) I think it’s hugely important, even or maybe especially when talking pop culture, to remember that income equality is the most important social issue of our time. It bubbles underneath the debates on health care and the budget that shut down Congress; it’s altering the demographics and architecture of our greatest cities, perhaps permanently; it’s undermining public education and, in fact, heavily influencing what the soda-swilling kids of America are fed by their struggling, overworked parents. And in terms of subject matter, income equality was all over the charts this year, with responses ranging from the compassionate Horatio Alger tales that Jay and Bey present; to the boho rejections of consumerism crafted within Lorde’s “Royals” and Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop”; to the working-class pride of Kacey Musgraves, fighting back a tide of country hits that approximate Chevy truck ads to stump for trailer park dwellers and shift workers blowin’ smoke."
...Unsurprisingly, Kanye West—music’s favorite troubled and troublesome soul for nearly a decade by now—issued the year’s most intense meditation on inequality, race, and privilege. Yeezus is a meditation the way the late Lou Reed’s master-middlefinger Metal Machine Music was one: Its noise and fury induce a headache that re-arranges your thought waves."
SLATE: The Music Club, 2013: Entry 4: Pop music’s great subject this year: income inequality.
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