Swet Shop Boys Brings the Best and Worst Out of Us

When music sparks controversy, it’s a good thing. Music is supposed to unearth the blemishes underneath our skin, our most animalistic and visceral emotions. It’s a synesthetic medium. So, it’s good that music can elicit straight-up racism, right?

Swet Shop Boys is one of my favorite new-(ish?) rap groups, especially because it’s a confluence of two rappers I’ve followed for a while now: Riz MC and Heems.

Riz Ahmed (stage name Riz MC), who’s probably more famous of his roles in Nightcrawler, Rogue One, and The Night Of, is actually an even more talented rapper, blending in his thoughts and outrage about Islamophobia and his Pakistani British identity with his pacey and frankly downright lyrical rhymes. Check out this poignant track from his mixtape Englistan, where the hook itself tells it all:

His background tracks always have some form of South Asian or Middle Eastern flair, with flutes and minor chords progressions that accentuate the darkness of the subjects he deals with.

And then… we have Heems, one-third of the cult group Das Racist that brought us this:

And this (woah, that’s Hassan Minhaj!):

Then Heems got clean, and his musical career exited onto the same ramp as Rix MC’s. Heems’s Eat Pray Thug was one of the most versatile and emotionally moving rap albums of 2015, an album that sifted through his experiences as an Indian American in post 9/11 Queens. Just contrast those last three Das Racist tracks to “Flag Shopping” from Eat Pray Thug.

The deeply affecting chorus summarizes the Indian American experience, something that’s both relatable and not at all hyperbolic: “They wanna shorter version/They wanna nickname/They wanna Toby us/Like we Kunta Kinte.”

The issues with Eat Pray Thug and Riz MC’s countless mixtapes is the reason why Swet Shop Boys works. Heems’s solo album lacked focus. It had a few tracks about his child of immigrants experiences, his brown experience, but his joke rap life trickled in with “Sometimes”, “So NY”, and “Pop Song”, all three of which are great listens, but irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Riz MC’s solo career is probably just the opposite — gratingly myopic. That’s a harsh discernment but not meant to be an insult. Riz MC and Heems are a pair that bring the best out of each other, and that’s apparent in their album Cashmere.

From “Phone Tap” to “Tiger Hologram”, Swet Shop Boys incorporates witty metaphors to fusion background tracks that take a while to understand, and probably a while longer for those who aren’t exactly what we call “brown.” The lyrics have a lot of Hindi and Urdu, and there’s no apology for it. It’s a fascinating album, not only musically and lyrically, but in its poignancy and originality.

Check out my favorite track from Cashmere, “Aaja”, a Sufi-esque qawwali riff playing underneath very British imagery:

So, what’s the point of this? Cashmere’s more than a year old now. Well, last night, on June 30, Swet Shop Boys made an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and performed “T5,” probably the most in-your-face song on their album.

And yes, the YouTube comments are fucking… expected.

Why does StrangE2u Waterworld have such outrage over someone simply expressing their opinion? Meaning is an interpretable quantity, not something that’s objective, and not something that always prescribed from corporations.

As opposed to something that’s fakely really good?

Backhanded compliments are exactly what everyone wants, G. Also Ryan McDowell, you’re like an idiot.

Cashing in on what wave? The wave of Islamophobia that causes actual hate crimes. And Pete Mclovins, I won’t comment on the fact that you compared speaking out about Islamophobia to homoeroticism, which just speaks to where your mind is. I’m not even going to comment on the fact that two dudes fucking is right about as gay as you can get. I won’t even comment on the fact that being annoyed at people embracing diversity is the very definition of racism, especially when it’s two men of color literally assimilating to Western forms of music. But there is something I will comment on: WHY THE FUCK DID YOU HYPHENATE GAYER? ER IS NOT A WORD THAT CAN STAND ALONE, HENCE YOU DO NOT HYPHENATE GAYER.

Spending about three minutes listening to original and interesting music and inadvertently scrolling down to blatant ignorance is disheartening. But is it a bad thing? If someone’s first reaction to being presented with truths about the same world they view in an entirely different lens is sheer outrage, then it’s probably best that we know, right? Maybe I’m conflating civil discourse with dimwitted obstinance on Youtube comment sections. Actually, that’s exactly what I’m doing. But I think it’s beautiful that a three-minute song that includes an Iliad reference and a Milli Vanilli shoutout in the same bar can generate any kind of discussion, even if it generates noise from the underbelly of our communities.