Pandemic Playlist: All About the Money Game

Erykah Badu, live from her bedroom.

On "Walmart Money," visions of money and class are presented as part of the soundtrack for your stay at home.

My installment of our “Pandemic Playlist” series starts with New Orleans’ Fiend in his International Jones mode because when I feel apocalyptic about what’s happening, I see class war coming, and I love Fiend turning class distinctions upside down as a former No Limit rapper living his version of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The playlist doesn’t always speak to the situation that inspired it. I don’t look to my songs to speak for me, and I don’t always even want them to spark a dialogue with me. In a house with a child home from school, I have someone else in the house with a lot of questions and a lot to say. Still, some thoughts cycle through. The current pandemic reminds us that it’s all about the money game, as Willie Hutch says. Here’s some of what I was thinking:

- I love pop songs and punk rock, but there aren’t many of either on this playlist because good pop and punk songs demand my attention. If I have to pay attention to my daughter, my work, my house and my playlist, something has to give. This playlist is designed with some space in it so that it accompanies my day (and hopefully yours) instead of becoming another item on the to-do list.

- This playlist has some of my current favorite artists—Willie Hutch, Erykah Badu (who's live-streaming regular, cool house concerts on her website), Hawkwind, Augustus Pablo, Scientist—but as is the way with playlists, some of my current favorites just didn’t fit. Right now, I’m listening regularly to Mamman Sani, a keyboard player from Niger, but each song on a playlist dictates what comes next, and Sani never made sense after a song here. Similarly, right now I’m really enjoying Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack and thought that something from it would end in the mix, but no. The vaguely psychedelic thread that runs through this playlist boxed out a lot of clearly defined rock songs like theirs. I momentarily thought that Nazareth’s meathead rock classic “Hair of the Dog” made sense after Mdou Moctar’s “Tarhatazed,” but again, no. Moctar’s heroics come from the same instrument and with the same virtuosity as a lot of hard rock guitarists, but the sonics and the impulses behind them were wrong. Moctar’s exploring a thought to see where it can go, whereas “Hair of the Dog” is a destination, the end of a journey. My favorite segue, incidentally, is from Moctar to Telefon Tel Aviv because I really didn’t see it coming until I heard it. Once I did, I couldn’t imagine “not breathing” not following “Tarhatazed.”

- Erykah Badu’s cover of Squeeze’s “Tempted” has killed the original for me. I had planned to put Badu on my playlist, but since Devorah did as well last week from the same But You Caint Use My Phone mixtape that I planned to draw from, I found this and am now obsessed by it. And since one cover demands a companion, Japanese Breakfast’s cover of Tears for Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” adding delicacy and fragility to a band that I always thought blustered to hide its uncertainty instead of dramatizing it. 

- Badu’s version of “Cell U Lar Device” on But You Caint Use My Phone remakes Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” which made me think of Timmy Thomas’ heartbreaking “Why Can’t We Live Together,” which gave “Hotline Bling” its sample. 

- Current situations brought some of these artists to mind. I’m working on a Sam Doores story right now, and I love “Cambodian Rock ’n’ Roll” from his recently released self-titled solo album. I recently reviewed the vinyl reissue of French yé-yé singer France Gall’s first three albums, and while looking for a song by her for this mix, I ran across Brigitte Bardot’s “Harley Davidson” and called an audible. Jidenna and Badu were scheduled to play Essence and Jazz Fest respectively, and I had great experiences seeing Moonlight Benjamin and Mdou Moctar at Jazz Fest last year. El Dusty is here because I hold out hope each year that Buku or Voodoo will book the Corpus Christi-based DJ and producer, who brings Latin sounds and particularly cumbia samples to his mixes. 

- The Waco Brothers’ version of Neil Young’s “Revolution Blues” started a first draft of this playlist, but I didn’t like it there. It put me down a straight-ahead rock/punk path that I had to force out of that lane. Still, the Mad Max-like vision of hippies (in Neil’s case) or punks (in the Wacos’) rolling in dune buggies through Laurel Canyon shooting the famous and well-to-do remains powerfully transgressive, and in the hands of the Waco Brothers, threatening/exhilarating, depending on which side of the class war you’re on. Love’s “A House is Not a Motel” sounds an ominous note from the hills of Los Angeles as well, maybe not of battle, but you know something’s coming. 

- Credit to Spotify: Usually the songs its algorithm suggests are obvious, but I didn’t know Junior Parker’s version of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” existed before I saw it there. Once I checked it, it was in for sure. Actually, there are a number of discoveries here since I needed the playlist to be genuinely fresh and not simply a reconfiguration of tracks I already know. Many of the artists such as producers David Holmes and Adrian Younge have done work I’ve really liked, but they still have a lot of music left for me to explore. I really liked Nikki Lane and enjoyed interviewing her in 2014, but somehow her second album got out without me noticing. “700,000 Rednecks” says I should have noticed. 

- I had two or three thoughts for final songs that all seemed like forced endings, or they were too obvious. Drake, on the other hand, simply made sense. In the land of Tiger King, Drake rules. It helps that I’m a sucker for slides, shuffles, and stepping, and the video helps too, even if you can’t see it here. Watching a masked Drake dance by himself through what I assume to be his house makes all the signs of affluence seem completely empty, particularly when the song itself is built around a dance so unassuming that it barely registers. 

The final shot in the video gives us an idea where his house is relative to Toronto, which will be useful because when the class war comes, we know where to go after we set off on floats, paddleboards, fishing boats and Jet-Skis to find and take down David Geffen, who shared with us his hardship of sheltering in place on his yacht. He says he's somewhere in the Grenadines. 

Previous Playlists
- Beyond Plastic Beach
-Quarantunes