Canadian rappers issue danceable call to arms, fuel G20 protestors’ unspecific rage
The music video for “Crash the Meeting” by local artists Test Their Logik is making the rounds on protestor sites. We see it as a fine metaphor for the activist culture surrounding the G20: fiercely anti-corporate, unabashedly angry, incredibly unfocused and filled with catch-all slogans recycled from the ’90s. Like the protest movement, it also revels in its unified disunity: “Every single one of us has a reason / Together we are strong let’s crash the meeting!” It’s like the broadest advertising campaign ever: Rage! Everyone has it, don’t worry about why!
Here, the video’s highlights and lowlights.
LOWLIGHT: Bill O’Reilly (0:53)
Bill O’Reilly is a politically divisive figure, there’s no doubt, but he’s not exactly a “media baron.” And couldn’t they find a video of him from after his stint on Inside Edition? He wasn’t even a political pundit then.
HIGHLIGHT: Barack Obama (1:16)
Any video that repurposes a clip from Ellen to make its subject—in this case, the president of the United States—look devious is automatically brilliant.
LOWLIGHT: “Creep them” (1:29)
The movement, as with many young people, is down with social media. Aside from outright confrontation with the police, the song seems to encourage Facestalking as a resistance method: “United, we cannot be defeated, G20 we’re ready, T-Dot it’s time to creep them.”
HIGHLIGHT: George W. Bush (1:56)
We appreciate the editing of the stilted videos of politicians simultaneously looking foolish and like they are grooving to the rhymes. Especially when they use the apparently still relevant George W. Bush footage.
LOWLIGHT: Forced rhymes (2:00)
“Bringing that fire, it’s incendiary / Because they locking down streets with the military / And the progress is death, it’s a cemetery / This ain’t Canada, this is native territory.”
LOWLIGHT: Silvio Berlusconi (2:46)
We hope that the Italian prime minister refrains from dry humping any of our parking officers while he’s here (though the prospect alone is worthy of protests).
