"We just had a tragedy ... so I thought it would be selfish not to speak on it"

Two main rules of this blog are:
1. Keep the focus on music.
2. Don't cover bad music. There's so much good music out there struggling to get heard that writing about bad music just defeats the purpose of running a blog.

This post will break both rules.

When a tragedy like the Virginia Tech shooting happens, people naturally try to connect to it. It helps us validate the grief we feel toward people we didn't know.

So don't fault Lil' Flip for his idea to make a tribute song to Virginia Tech. Fault him for the song itself.



The overly schmaltzy beat samples Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" and lyrically gets off on the wrong foot. The (Houston) rapper starts by saying "I thought it would be selfish not to speak on it" then raps about how he got shot and how he has lost relatives. He even lauds himself for making the track and works in a subtle suggestion to take a copy of the track to your local radio station.

Normally, I wouldn't say "this song is really silly; listen to it." As we saw from post-9/11 songs like Toby Keith's "boot in your ass" U.S.A. anthem and Paul McCartney's "Freedom," in which he repeated "Talkin' 'bout freeeeeedom" even more than he repeated "Heeeeyyyyy Jude," tragedy doesn't make the best muse. But this serves as a good case study. People have left comments on his myspace page that the song helps. But when there's so much attention already focused on a tragedy, does this come off a consoling, or just self-serving?

Lil' Flip -- "Virginia Tech Song (STREAM)