Adeem the Artist, White Trash Revelry (2022)

I'm glad you recommended this album and this man. He is how music ought to be done. He knows how to find the universal in the specific. He's also not embarrassed about laying his politics bare.

The art always come first, before politics or anything else. But every work of art and every person who becomes an artist through his or her work can never divorce art from some assumed way of life. The Greeks composed epics and plays glorifying their wars and government. The Romans wrote odes to Caesar. Medieval artists painted large murals depicting the intersection between God, angels, and humanity. Our age is an age of democracy. Not in fact but in ideal. Art that doesn't praise the individual experience and democratic character is no art at all.

I don't know if Adeem the Artist is a great artist. I wouldn't even dare say who is a great artist as far as musicians are concerned. But Adeem is a good artist, and that's good enough. Good enough for me.