Song 69: Black

I haven't watched The Brits in years. They always seemed dreadful, literally nothing to do with what good music meant to me.

But on Tuesday, I'd done bedtime, was finding the Liverpool-Atletico game pretty boring, and switched over to take a quick look. As luck would have it, I was just in time for actor Micheal Ward to introduce his 'Top Boy' co-star Dave.

I first heard Dave via the Ivor Novello-winning 'Question Time' a couple of years ago. It was instantly apparent he was a bit special - there's not much not to love ... the name, of course. His twitter handle being Santan Dave because he used to hang out near the Santander on Streatham High Street, one of his best songs being named after that same Streatham.

My taste for hip-hop comes and goes, but Dave's precocity, married to clarity, musicality, ambition and daring, made for the the most striking and unignorable British talent i'd heard since Roots Manuva's 'Run Come Save Me.'

I first heard 'Black' at the start of 2019. His first single from the soon-to-be-Mercury (and now Brit) Award winning album 'Psychodrama'. It caused a bit of a stir on release, with a few white listeners saying its pro-black message was racist. As you're no doubt aware, the stunning version he performed (with a couple of extra verses) this week, has blown up that white outrage exponentially.

Now, 'Black' was, as you see here, my favourite song on 2019. I already loved it, and I guess I'd already given it a fair bit of thought. I can see that, to certain ears, it's "incendiary" and "provocative", but mainly it's just pretty poweful and beautifully expressed.

It's brought out the predictably dim "what if a white person said that" responses from dim people unembarrassed about letting their racism hang out.

Something that Dave shares with Stormzy is that all the angles people might use to attack them don't work. At the moment, they've got it all covered. Both smart beyond measure, smart like Dylan and Bowie, smart like they already know your next move. But, yeah, people always find new angles. I think the Dylan thing might be a decent comparison. People will expect Dave to be a blameless spokesperson now. Any wrong move they'll be looking to capitalise on.

We talk about racism in Britain more than we used to, but we're still nowhere near understanding it or acknowledging what we're dealing with. People like Dave may have to tell white Britain over and over and over again how racist it is before it hears. The good thing is, I think, that while some people will be appalled and become entrenched. Lots of people don't want to hear they're racist, but also lots of them actually don't want to be racist, and they will listen. They will think a bit more about it. That's the hope anyway.

Look, there have been lots of songs about racism before, but I haven't heard one which so perfectly articulated, and made me really think properly about, the experience of being black in Britain. It feels like he covers everything in three minutes - it's a guidebook for white people, should they wish to hear it.

So there we go. Dave sang 'Black' at the Brits and it was one of the best things I've ever seen. Read this in The Spectator. Fucking hell, "Dave" is just boring, apparently. Racism is so boring, isn't it. Fucking hell.
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/rap-stars-like-dave-should-stop-calling-boris-a-racist/