#Our governments enemy numero uno

[0olionheartedlovero0]

[vervevibesvino]

Vibes + Vino: Langmeil Hangin’ Snakes 2013 with Run the Jewels 3

Vibes: Run the Jewels 3 - Run the Jewels Vino: Langmeil Hangin’ Snakes Shiraz/Viognier Blend 2013

Quick notes: Black fruit. Bold and bracing, but not flamboyant impact. Fine tannins. Medium+ alcohol. Somewhat leggy but doesn’t stick. Pepper notes.

Comparatives: “I hope with the highest of hopes” a hopeful (not to be mistaken with enthusiastic) dogma sets the tone in “Down”, track numero uno of RTJ3. This creed acts as a blanket for the suppressed combustion of later tracks, ignited like suppressed “when will we be heard?” and “brace yourself for [insert X event here]” narrations fighting for mental and physical existence within media, policy, and humanism in 2016 going into 2017.

There is no shortness of politically charged anthems this past year and the third major Killer Mike/El-P collab plunges into the same murky, turmoil-of-the-times waters. They echo similar reality-check perceptions not limited to police brutality, race relations, and wage gaps.

This bracing form is like Australian, Barossa Valley Shiraz: bold, with unabated, consuming defiance. It’s gripping in concentration. But much like this Langmeil blend mellowed out by Viognier, it alters within axial commotion in a warzone that’s not defined by time or space. A very middle-fingers-up account if you will. To my fellow binge watchers of How to Get Away with Murder, I imagine something like a raging urgency, teary-eyed, snot-flying Annalise Keating dropping a verse in the “Don’t Get Captured” RTJ3 track as a reference point.

Run the Jewels collectively have a running-the-bureaucratic-gamut emcee history even before they both linked up in 2012. It’s evolved since. RTJ3 to me is Gil Scott-Heron preaching rhetoric, just short of direct 2pac and Immortal Technique “fuck you”s, with Public Enemy tenacity… warily looking for accountability like a Malcom X speech in the 60s. This dynamic is all met with a bit of resistance, all exposed with a screen of fog in-between, all very much with the unfortunate reality to be misconstrued.

The common confusion between Shiraz/Syrah/Petite Syrah (Shiraz and Syrah are the same — two different names for the same red wine grape just from different regions, while Petite Sirah is related but entirely different) paints a comparable picture to these type of misconstrued matters, and how easy it is for world perception, especially in music, to coin artists as catalysts to sudden, for-no-reason outlash rather than as reporters of societal observation and fear. The aftereffects then mutating from the culmination of varied disqualifying of civil realities, much giving weight to the Dr. King speech sample of “a riot is the language of the unheard.”

The syncopated, back-to-back texture of rapid fire Killer Mike baritone and El-P wit bombs crisscrossed to that 808 snare reap very human, primal responses to the inhabiting brainwork of those of us just on the tip of revolt (or already there), but met with a heartbreak barricade (i.e. “It sounds like war/And it breaks our hearts” from A Report To The Shareholders/Kill Your Masters).

It’s as if we’re screaming faux obscenities like a 10 y.o. who can’t swear in front of the parents. Which, coincidentally, is the theory of how the “Hangin’ Snakes!” wine name came about  — one of Langmeil’s best growers doesn’t curse, hence the expression, “Hangin’ Snakes!”. EXCEPT, in the RTJ3 and 10 y.o. shriek-like cases, even the so-called obscenities are clear behind the backdrop of fog.

The position many journalists have taken in the wake of the election conveys this on the nail. While there are both brilliant and horrific versions of each, I can’t think of another example in time, at least in most recent years, when important figures in the print and digital realms willingly jumped off the censored dick-riding wagon, alternately taking defiant jars openly [in reporting] (still with a lot of tongue-holding, but much less in comparison to preceding political matters) despite all ramifications of doing so.

Politics hasn’t absolved itself from musical voice -- it’s there, affecting community, sculpting faith, questioning authority. RJT3 simply emphasizes how the anguish and uncertainty of our current political climate actualizes the desperation in the air and brings us back to the mechanics of hope, if nothing else.

Most of the album you don’t know where RTJ3 is going, but it’s a paradigm they unmistakably execute well as the heaviest duo of critical hopefuls. It’s a call to arms caution that our current state is not a moratorium to government affairs, it’s a rough, combative hallmark where there are no segways. The rhythm in their message pounces on advocacy and how action met with doubt decays, while action met with hope withstands the war. So while we push forward and the world watches, the perpetual physical and mental muscle comes in the form of spiritual-like guidance: “you defeat the devil when you hold onto hope.”