6th
I do a radio show on WYBC (stream it at wybc.com) called Big Wilma. Every Wednesday at 6, my co-host Kelsey and I play songs that fit a particular theme. This week, the theme is songs about politics. Lil Wayne’s ‘Georgia… Bush’ is, in my opinion, one of the two most important political songs of this century (the other is Toby Keith’s ‘Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue’). Unfortunately, Lil Wayne uses a lot of words that aren’t radio friendly while describing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and so I was worried I wouldn’t be able to play it. But, thanks to the Yale Music Lab, I was able to bleep all of the bad words using Wave Editor. In fact, the reduce gain process makes for a rather elegant edit that keeps the momentum of the song intact.
Coincidently, ‘Georgia… Bush’ has a terrific loop in its background. The song samples ‘Georgia On My Mind’ by Ray Charles, taking the opening refrain and clipping it with the iconic strings from the same track. The sample drops into the background, while a simple drum kit with heavy bass and cymbals takes over, as Lil Wayne’s anger builds. Ray Charles’s voice returns whenever the lyrics deem it necessary, and the full sample comes back for the chorus, but this time the sample is seeped in irony and cynicism. Like Steve Reich’s ‘Come Out’, ‘Georgia… Bush’ transforms a simple loop into a dramatic statement about race in America.
