Mick Jenkins — Martyrs (2013)
Mick who?
Using his birth name, (Jayson) Mick Jenkins (b.1991) thus signifies his ‘authenticity’; a gambit of a ‘real’ MC. It’s a trope of presenting one’s perspectives as honest and legitimate. The Alabama born, but Chicago based, rapper’s breakthrough single, Martyrs, came from 2014’s The Water[s] mixtape. Consistent with Jenkins’ choice of artist moniker, the track is nothing if not raw:
I first heard it in 2015, and it’s periodically gone through my mind on repeat for 8 years since. I thought I better write about it, if only to attempt to exercise it from the record player in my mind.
La petite mort
Disconcertingly, for years after first hearing it, it would almost instantly play in my mind the moment after a la petite mort. Freud would have a field day — I shudder to think. Writing this may help to exercise this affliction (I sure hope it does!). Thankfully, it doesn’t play in my mind at the moment of a little death quite so much anymore — I/we have a 2 year old toddler, so there are far fewer petite morts than there used to be. Now the daily drudgery of domesticity is its own mort for which the soundtrack is invariably continual deep sighing.
Strange fruit
From one death to another, Martyrs’ production by OnGaud is built around a haunting sample — “strange fruit hanging from the poplar tree” — from Carmen McRae’s 1962 cover of Billie Holiday’s 1939 Strange Fruit (originally written by a second generation Russian Jewish émigré to the USA, Abel Meeropol). Holiday’s classic concerns the hanging of black men from trees in the Southern United States because of racially motivated violence. That sentence fails to capture the brutality so vividly and movingly articulated in poetic fashion by Holiday.
Martyrs also features audio recordings of a 2013 interview with James Broadnax, an incarcerated African-American who was charged and proudly pleaded guilty to murdering two victims of a robbery.
The use of these samples suggests that one message of the track is that violence begets violence. The actions of Broadnax can be linked back directly to the horrific violence inflicted upon his community only two generations prior (and to this day in a different guise: KRS-One: Sound of da Police [1993]). Hauntology (Derrida, 1994) is at work here. Namely, the return of a brutal past to affect the life possibilities and practices of Jenkins and his contemporary African-American men.
Hanging
The principal double entendre in Martyrs is the use of ‘hanging’. This is disturbingly depicted in the music video, whereby Jenkins and his associates appear in a basement, topless, smoking, with ropes around their necks. They are both ‘chilling out’, and the ‘walking dead’. As Jenkins states: “I’d never run from a battle I’d rather hang from the gallows.” This imagery is supplemented by scenes of Jenkins rapping in foreboding woodland, surrounded by bare trees.
The chorus satirically repeats themes of crass materialism, misogyny, fear, and escapism. In the trap music era in which it was released, Martyrs is likely ironically sung to hype a crowd in a manner in sync with the catchiness of the harmony of the hook, but in sharp juxtaposition with the argument being presented lyrically. This is analogous to how Dead Prez’s Hip Hop (2000) was ironically misappropriated by mainstream consumers amidst the ‘shiny suit’ era of crass materialistic rap championed by Bad Boy Entertainment (the track even recently [2017] featured in a Volkswagen advertisement!).
Echoing the haunting sounds of Mobb Deep, Jenkins closes by lamenting:
“Hanging on for dear life
For the love of the money
Hanging on for dear life
Don’t that shit sound funny?
Hanging on for dear life
For the love of the gold
Hanging on for dear life
Don’t that shit feel cold?”
Bibliography
Amoako, A. (2019, April 17). Strange Fruit: The most shocking song of all time? BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190415-strange-fruit-the-most-shocking-song-of-all-time
Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx: the state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international (Trans. P. Kamuf). New York; Oxford: Routledge.
Fisher, M. (2013). The metaphysics of crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology. Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, 5(2), 42–55. doi: 10.12801/1947–5403.2013.05.02.03
GENIUS. (2013, Nov 7). Martyrs. Available at: https://genius.com/Mick-jenkins-martyrs-lyrics
