The Clantes Say No to Consumerism
Shoes and Nike are a problem in this advertiser-run world that pushes happiness at all costs.
The title of the extended play alone (Cos I Am Made of Iron) is enough to have one think about many things all at once, the problem being that when you try to think of many things all at once, you end up thinking about nothing.
That said, the Cos I Am Made of Iron extended play – is a three-play; in other words, it’s three songs in one. (Released on Christmas Eve 2023, you’ll have to forgive us for reviewing it late.)
‘Keep Calm & Carry On’, the first song off the three-play, has Ryano Rhymes. It starts with a soft piano, and kicks in with a monotonous but strong, if not heavy, beat and then we hear the words:
Start the revolution
And later on, we hear:
Because you find the fight is now a franchise
Your rights packaged, advertised and sold by the ones below the one per cent, because they got ambitions, right?
Friends laugh, we hear from the song, when we don’t have the latest i-devices. You have to give it to the rapper, for he manages to pack up a lot of words in a quick succesion.
‘Keep calm and carry on’ is the advice we receive
We can’t be sad when we’ve got retail therapy
You’re not allowed to be unhappy and joy is measured by the price we pay to advertise upon our body
Then there’s single crispy line:
Austerity is just a little funny word to them
When that crispy line is done delivered, enters an almost cynical laugh, and then later on, we hear
By all means, work and earn your living
Keep and be grateful that you get to see your family twice a week
For the musician, he sees young angry fools who prioritize shoes, shoes being an unimportant thing.
The song’s message is that a person must keep calm and carry on eating lies and being blind or remove the blindfold using the third eye.
I love the lies / blind / eye rhyming.
This swipe, or sentiment against clothing, is also the object of discussion in the second song of the extended play. The song, ‘No Nike Round Eeer’, has Steppa, with its monotonous beat reminding one of the beat on Eminem’s ‘Like Toy Soldiers’.
On this song, Steppa talks as if his listeners know that he doesn’t wear Nike. One has to ask, what does Steppa wear since he doesn’t wear the glorified Nike?
The most remarkable, or happiest song on the three-play, is ‘Don’t Really Know’. For me, the song’s beauty is that you hear Rum Brucctree sing. The other songs are gloomy, if you will.
La-la
La-la
La-laaa
The song – and I want to reemphasize that I love it when Rum sings – talks about the things we do to try to be righteous.
One of my criticisms of the extended play is that it can be difficult to know when one song starts and the other ends.
On the whole, the first two songs of the three-play ask us to take a difficult position against capitalism, if you will. Personally, I think advertisers manipulate, if they do that actually, our needs.
Perhaps, we give them more whereas they give us little, might be the implication we get from the song. Humans want to be happy, so advertisers and retailers provide it, with the cynical, if not jaded song, worried that we are forced to be happy – capital forces us to be happy.
So, there’s that cynicism the songs give us; maybe the songs want us to be minimalists and keep advertisers and retailers. The conundrum here is: will moving towards minimalism make us happy, whereas the musicians seem to be against happiness itself? I mean, this gets philosophical, and it raises difficult questions, no wonder why the ‘Keep Calm & Carry On’ tells us we can just continue living blindsided and believing the lies.
My problem with thinking and communism is that there are problems it cannot or has not solved, and I am heartened by the fact that the first song seems to understand that life can neither be an utopia nor nirvana. In other words, and this makes me happy, the musician here understands that a person should be both happy that they have a job, even though that makes them see family less.
For here's another issue the three-play raises: it's not only advertisers that are ganged up against us, the first song tells us, but our friends laugh at us for not having the latest gadgets.
All said, one has to ask: why is the title of the three-play Cos I Am Made of Iron – is it because when you lose the blindfold and stop believing the lies and do not wear Nike mean you are made of Iron? Is it because you are strong? Of course, all this is debatable.