Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People

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Released
  
September 6, 2005

Recorded
  
Houston, Texas

Length
  
3:48

Format
  
Digital download

Genre
  
Hip hop

George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People

Writer(s)
  
Big Mon and Damien aka Dem Knock-Out Boyz

"George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" is a protest song by Houston-based hip hop duo The Legendary K.O. It was released on September 6, 2005, just days after Hurricane Katrina. The song was made available free on the Internet. The song was a single first made available from FWMJ's Rappers I Know website. It was released using the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. It has been described as "vividly topical", and "one of the best political protest songs of all time".

History

The politically charged song is a response to the Bush administration's heavily criticized response to Hurricane Katrina. Its title comes directly from a statement Kanye West made on U.S. national television.

It is a mash-up which gets its beat from Kanye West's song "Gold Digger". The first line in the song is a quote from West speaking at A Concert for Hurricane Relief. The song was "recorded on home computers and composed through emails and instant messaging", and spread widely over the Internet for several weeks after the catastrophe, in some cases backing video mash-ups with photo montages from the hurricane.

The song specifically criticized George W. Bush for his slow reaction to the plight of New Orleans. It "vividly recounts the plight of those who endured the hurricane", telling its story in part in the voice of a Katrina survivor giving a first-person account of the hardships of the time, alternating with direct criticism of President Bush and his perceived priorities.

The refrain of the song asserts that "George Bush ain't a gold digger, but he ain't messin with no broke niggas" (a modified version of the line from the original Gold Digger), and implores, "come down, Bush, come on, come down" to New Orleans. Similar themes, including the characterization of black victims of the hurricane as looters, were covered by Public Enemy in a contemporaneous single, "Hell No We Ain't All Right!" The narrative thereby seeks to shift the perception of Katrina victims, effecting "a reconfiguration of storm survivors, from threatening others to abandoned Americans".

References

George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People Wikipedia