Native American hip-hopper Supaman turns very cynical on his new album ‘Medicine Bundle’
Native American hip-hopper Supaman (Apsáalooke) has a new album out. It’s called Medicine Bundle and you can listen to it here. It’s varied and has a lot of guest artists, a mix of hip hop, R&B and native american music, a lot of history lessons and social criticism. A musical feast with some disconcerting messages.
The above video contains a collaboration with Native American singer Ashley Hall and is an ode to “mothers, grandmothers, step mothers, clan mothers” passing down the values taught to them by their mothers to their children. It’s the most indigenous work on the album, the rest is pretty hip-hoppy with some native drums and a flute here and there. His previous album Illuminatives contains more Indigenous music.
Corona scepticism
There are two tracks on the album that worry me somewhat, one is Eclipse, a remix with some lines by rapper Saigon, who raps that taking the corona vaccine is “like taking fire and dousing it with gasoline“. Supaman himself refers to some popular conspiracy theories around corona and the corona vaccines, alternating his questionable statements with some legitimate criticism, like “they got a patent on the virus and the vaccines; yo, it’s like a bad dream, I hope you kids get this; all of your sicknesses are big business”
The track Let em Go contains a sample of someone (supposedly Michael Ellner, a self-help guru, I googled) saying: “Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom.”
Scientists destroy truth? This kind of scepticism doesn’t sit well with me, but I can understand this attitude from someone like Supaman, scion of a people that has been screwed over by the governnment and its institutions for two and a half centuries. In Eclipse he raps cynically: “You can trust the government, yeah, just ask a Native.” (PB)
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