Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently.
It can be hard to remember amidst the downfall of everything, but 250 years of America is a major milestone. America, more of a grand experiment than a nation, a fantastical idea suggesting a very modern notion that the point of a country is the pursuit of the unachievable, starting with happiness. A nation that aspires toward its utopian principles but at heart is just as much about territory, empire, and extraction. It's a nation of contradictions, is what I'm getting at: atop those purple mountains' majesty and above those fruited plains lies both beauty and madness, achievement and grift, togetherness and division.
And no nation loves its own mythology like America does. You can follow official White House Twitter accounts to see that. It's a mythology that imagines America not as a fight over taxes or even as the "brave" discovery of a definitely-not-lost (please do not say that he got lost) Christopher Columbus, but as a nation literally crafted by white God himself, with little baby Jesus in his loving arms. America especially loves its myths on the Fourth of July: hotdogs, sparklers, baseball, freshly baked apple pie on a kitchen windowsill. Precious, but also convenient, it fits a motif of America as a place not just for white people but that belongs to them. Or to quote my favorite line from The Good Shepherd, on the subject of what it is that WASPs have: "The United States of America, the rest of you are just visiting."
But try as they might, nonwhite people make America rise to its potential. This is especially true of black Americans, who quite literally built this country. That history and culture is not a side story of American greatness, but rather its core. As much as people try to lump things like baseball, BBQs, and folk music as true Americana, there has never been a more American art form than rap music, because rap music deals with America as it is: the pain and the struggle, the trauma, the violence, the history, but also the aspiration, the greed, the delusions of grandeur. Our very best selves and our worst attributes, love and beauty, but also misogyny, homophobia, conspiracy, paranoia, and ugliness. The fight for liberation and the illusion that money can make you free, working in tandem, sometimes in the same songs. America as a walking contradiction.
It is in that spirit that I share 25 rap songs for 250 years of America. Think of it as a playlist that envisions what America symbolizes, in all its bad and good.
Wu-Tang Clan - "C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)"
Public Enemy - "Fight The Power"
Jamie XX, Young Thug, Popcaan - "I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)"
Trick Daddy, Trina, The Slip-N-Slide Express - "Take It To Da House"
Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg - "Nuthin' But A G Thang"
Nas & Lauryn Hill - "If I Ruled The World (Imagine That)"
DJ Khaled, Akon, T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Birdman, & Lil Wayne - "We Takin' Over"
Young Thug & Rich Homie Quan (Rich Gang) - "Lifestyle"
Outkast - "B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)"
Freeway, Beanie Sigel, & Jay-Z - "What We Do"
Nicki Minaj & Drake - "Moment 4 Life"
Jay-Z & Mary J. Blige - "Can't Knock The Hustle"
Kendrick Lamar - "Not Like Us"
Kanye West & Pusha T - "Runaway"
UGK & Outkast - "International Players Anthem (I Choose You)"
Lil Kim, Left Eye, Missy Elliot, Da Brat, & Angie Martinez - "Not Tonight (Ladies Night Remix)"
Mobb Deep - "Shook Ones, Pt. II"
The Diplomats (Cam'Ron, Juelz Santana, & Jim Jones) - "I Really Mean It"
In Remembrance Of Tay Keith
On June 18, rap super-producer Tay Keith, real name Brytavious Lakeith Chambers, was found dead in his Nashville, Tenn., apartment. He was 29 years old. Less than a decade ago, Tay Keith burst into the hip-hop mainstream—collaborating with rapper BlocBoy JB, when Drake jumped on the aforementioned rapper's record "Look Alive" from 2018—while the producer was still a student at a local Memphis college. Keith had been making records for other Memphis rappers like Blac Youngsta and Moneybagg Yo, but the Drake feature helped propel "Look Alive" into his first massive hit, reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. And the producer tag ("Tay Keith, fuck these niggas up") made sure you'd remember his name.
As a producer, Keith was a logical extension of other hard-edged sound technicians like Lex Luger and Young Chop. Yet there was a smoothness even in the aggression. He wanted to make you move, whether through moshing or dancing, which probably explains how he could go from producing hardcore Memphis trap to Travis Scott to even Beyoncé.
In just eight years, Keith turned himself into an A-list rap producer, getting his first Billboard No. 1 with Travis Scott's "SICKO MODE." Most recently, he had formed a partnership with rising rap star Sexyy Red, executive producing 2024's In Sexyy We Trust, and producing several of her tracks. Before his death, he'd contributed substantially to Key Glock's latest Project X.
Tay Keith found enormous success, yet he was still in his prime and growing into himself. There are very few dependable star producers left, particularly in an age where everyone is making music for an algorithm. It's a real loss for music, but also incredibly dispiriting to see another black legend dead way too early. He deserved his flowers, as they say, and he should've gotten it while he was still on this Earth. He really did fuck us all up, and I'd like to try and find some solace in that fact.
The Non-Rap Song Of America's 250th
This is America to me.
If you would like to contribute a song, a suggestion, or ask a question for future installments, email me at israel@defector.com.
