46 years later, a painfully timely Richard Pryor routine becomes a viral Spotify hit
It doesn’t have a catchy melody or a beat to inspire some new online dance challenge. But there it was Friday morning at No. 8 on Spotify’s U.S. Viral 50 chart: “N— vs. the Police†by Richard Pryor, from the late comedy legend’s Grammy-winning 1974 album “That N—’s Crazy.â€
The classic bit has Pryor riffing on the routine mistreatment black Americans face by police — and on the widespread disbelief among white Americans that such mistreatment takes place.
And it’s just one of a number of old tracks that have bubbled up onto the Viral 50 chart — typically a reflection of which songs are taking off on TikTok at any given moment — in the wake of nationwide protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd last week by Minneapolis police.
Amid the nationwide protests over police brutality, Killer Mike and El-P released Run the Jewels’ prescient new “RTJ4†album two days early.
Beyond the Pryor routine, the closely watched tally includes Gil Scott-Heron’s proto-rap anthem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised†and N.W.A’s indelible “F— tha Police.†Public Enemy is represented with “Fight the Power†and James Brown with “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud, Pt. 1.†(On Friday, more than three decades after he left N.W.A, Ice Cube tweeted a list of companies he said “have benefited in the past or continue to benefit from prison labor.â€)
“Wake Up Everybody,†Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ mid-’70s R&B jam about the need “to build a new land,†is on the chart, as are two key artifacts from the 1990s gospel-soul scene: Kirk Franklin’s “Revolution†and “Optimistic†by the long-running vocal group Sounds of Blackness.
Several more recent selections are mixed in among the oldies, including “Don’t Shoot†— the Game’s star-studded 2014 remembrance of another unarmed victim of police violence, 18-year-old Michael Brown — and Childish Gambino’s 2018 “This Is America,†which has also jumped back onto Spotify’s chart of the 50 most popular songs on the platform overall.
Also on the Viral 50 tally: “Don’t Die†from 2012’s “R.A.P. Music†album by Killer Mike, whose group Run the Jewels just released its timely new LP with a song in which the rapper delivers these lines:
You so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me
Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, “I can’t breatheâ€
And you sit there in house on couch and watch it on TV
The most you give is a Twitter rant and call it a tragedy
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