Art: Our Missing Rage, Nirvana at 20, and the New ICONACLASS Record.
iconAclass - Long Haul Official Video from deadverse recordings.
“I carried my world on these shoulders like Atlas.” - Will Brooks, aka MC dälek, aka iconAclass.
I was a fan of dälek long, long before they worked on Lilith, and our collaboration was something of a wish fulfillment for me, as I got to work with a band that truly inspired me and fueled my inner passions. dälek is one of the few overtly political and opinionated musical acts remaining, and they’ve shown no signs of slowing down. Will Brooks, aka MC dälek, is releasing his first solo LP For the Ones under the moniker iconAclass.
Will is an astute observer and poet, he’s always got his finger on the pulse of the injustices upon the underrepresented and voiceless. There’s a genuine anger to his lyrics, and not in the shout-at-the-world-on-a-soapbox sense. He’s an artist that is genuinely concerned, focusing his energies in responding to dark forces and setting shit straight.
In listening to iconAclass I’m reminded of the unique brand of outrage that music had in the 80s and 90s, and it’s a revelation that is made more poignant with the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind. The music of that era from bands like Nirvana and Public Enemy was a clear and abrasive response to the effects of the Reagan / Thatcher administrations, of disaffected and skeptical youth brandishing their anger against a system that continued to marginalize them and pay into the privileged and ancient. Kurt Cobain screams at the Baby Boomer establishment “here we are now, entertain us” with a sardonic, Tourette’s-soaked wink of the eye. Chuck D opens his rhyme in “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” with a grim view of the establishment: I got a letter from the government the other day, I opened and read it; it said they were suckers. They wanted me for their army or whatever, picture me giving a damn, I said never. Here is a land that never gave a damn about a brother like me and myself, because they never did.
That’s some seriously powerful shit, and it fueled my rage against the establishment as a kid, and even as I type the lyrics out today, it gets me pumped up. It’s because we have a lot to be angry about with the way things have been going in the past fifteen years. Youth unemployment is at an all-time high and the latest crops of college graduates are being labeled as “The Lost Generation.” We have a lot to be angry about.
And yet when I look at the art being produced in response to this, it’s shockingly milquetoast. Instead of Nirvana we’ve got Maroon 5 and Gym Class Heroes. Instead of Public Enemy we’ve got Odd Future rapping about raping and killing people, and T-Pain rapping about …whatever. But this isn’t about the quality of the music - which has actually been quite high - rather this is about the content. We’re drowning in escapism at a time when we desperately need to bring the truth. Art is is currently working as an opiate of the masses - here we are now, entertain us.
Which is why I absolutely treasure records like iconAclass ’ For the Ones. I won’t lie to you - I’m giving the record props because Will is my brother, but he’s also just flat out made a great, gritty hip-hop record that brings the truth and a genuine anger with the way things are going for us. It’s the first record I’ve heard in a long while that has a fire, and wants to be heard. It’s like the old-school jams of Grandmaster Flash and Eric B and Rakim, where you can bounce to it but you’re getting an authentic diatribe of our current shit state of affairs along with the boom-bap. That’s classic dälek for you.
IconAclass’ For the Ones may not be the next Nevermind but I can’t think of another record out there right now that honors that masterpiece’s spirit more. We need more music like it, we need to make our discontent heard, we need to have art that springs us into action. I think Kurt Cobain would definitely approve.
