Politics

Artist

Bobby Sessions

Album

RVLTN (Chapter 1): The Divided States of AmeriKKKa

Genre

Hip-Hop/Rap

"Politics" appears on RVLTN (Chapter 1): The Divided States of AmeriKKKa (Def Jam EP, July 20, 2018). The song gathers several strands of the Black American experience (police violence, the for-profit prison system, and NFL players kneeling during the national anthem) into one argument. Sessions ties the backlash against Colin Kaepernick's protest to the machinery of incarceration, noting that the same forces that want players to "stop kneeling on the field" also "want to lock us up." In a Billboard interview he described making the EP as therapy following his cousin's death: "being able to make music and being able to study our history pre-slavery, where I learned how great people of color are, it made me feel very empowered." The track was named a Protest Song of the Week, placing it directly in the tradition the archive documents.