Jim Jones, “Never Did 3 Quarters”
Jim Jones’ song is structured through call and response. The speaker makes a statement, and his crew responds through affirmations or questions. This format is very suitable to the story the song is telling: the evolution a community and the lessons it teaches us. The video for Anderson Paak’s song “Lockdown,” which engages with the paradox of a revolution and a pandemic happening at the same time, uses a similar format of dialogue with multiple voices and current events. “Lockdown” shows that identity in the present moment is a post-modern collage of influences that we weave into a semblance of sense.
Just like Jim Jones’ lyrics are always in relationship to the tropes about life in poor Black neighborhoods, “Lockdown” is always in a relationship to quarantine and to the Black Lives Matter Movement. The artist uses samples from BLM chants, local news reports, gunshots, as well as graphic drawings that include the names of victims of police violence. However, the musical style of the song remains consistently mellow; the melody lulls the listener into a false sense of security, just like the affirmations of the crew in Jones’ song may convince the speaker that he’s right in all of his opinions. The majority of Anderson Paak’s video shows people in lockdown in domestic activities — grocery shopping, sitting around and talking, putting a child to sleep — while watching the news about the BLM revolution on TV. There’s something mournful and hopeless about this experience of disconnection, like a strangled shout. Thinking about this song in dialogue with “Never Did 3 Quarters” makes one rethink the streets. In Jones’ song, the streets are a tough teacher, in “Lockdown,” they are a site of danger and revolutionary fervor.
The speaker in both songs is always in a state of nostalgia: of longing for this mystical concept of the streets that is either in the past of at a distance. Both songs show that identity is constructed in relationship to this street mythology — each of us is defined by our relationship to our communities; even when we may be on lockdown, or when their lessons might be laying dormant in us, the streets are always with us.
