Music
John Legend Calls Out Rappers Who Support Trump During His Joe Biden Rally Performance
Getty Image In recent days, Lil Wayne and Lil Pump have associated themselves with the president. …
While the majority of pop culture figures appear to have thrown their weight behind Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, there are a handful of famous folks who have decided to attach themselves to Donald Trump. Lil Wayne and Lil Pump both associated with the president in recent days, for example, as did 50 Cent, although he quickly had a change of heart. Meanwhile, John Legend performed at a Joe Biden rally yesterday, and although he didn’t name names, he did criticize Trump-supporting rappers.
.@JohnLegend: We'll choose "a country where The President encourages police brutality and cannot bring himself to condemn white supremacists or neo-Nazis, or one where we hold our police accountable and begin to root out the systemic racism in our society." pic.twitter.com/yKfpfSUDCm
— The Hill (@thehill) November 3, 2020
Legend said during a speech:
“Some people see the meanness, the bullying, the selfishness of Donald Trump and they mistake it for strength, a kind of twisted masculinity. Some see his greed and they mistake it for being good at business. Some of your former favorite rappers have been taken in by these lies. I think they even founded a new supergroup, it’s called ‘The Sunken Place.’”
He went on to address Trump’s “Platinum Plan,” and his review wasn’t glowing: “But Trump’s Platinum Plan for Black folks is nothing but fool’s gold, because you can’t bank on a word he says. Ask the students of Trump University. Ask all of the contractors he stiffed. Ask the people his charity was supposed to help before it was shut down for being a fraud. Ask all the Black and brown Americans who are dying from this virus and losing their jobs under his watch. The president isn’t strong: He’s a coward, and his career in business and in government has been failure after failure after failure.”
Check out the full speech above.
Artist Spotlight
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” finds a new direction through Ghost of Panama
Rearranging a song that carries six decades of cultural weight is a creative challenge, but Ghost of Panama approaches “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with clear purpose. The rock band radically reworks Bob Dylan’s counter-culture hit, reshaping its identity while keeping its rebellious spirit. It’s a tribute to musical heritage and a statement of artistic independence all in one.
This new interpretation is very much shaped by the production, made at Ghost of Panama’s home studio in West London. The setting allows an intimate approach to reinterpreting a familiar song and lets the group engage directly with the material, taking it in a new artistic direction.
“Subterranean Homesick Blues” centers on the tension between conservation and transformation. Ghost of Panama is true to the song’s rebellious spirit without adding to its legacy, and this approach gives the release an adventurous feel, grounded in countercultural energy but driven by a desire to see what the composition can become in a different musical context.
Their version of this 60-year-old classic shows that respecting a song’s history can also mean breaking the rules and finding new ways to express its spirit. Fundamentally, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” presents Ghost of Panama as artists who want to engage with the past without being tied to it. The release’s strongest identity is a familiar heritage reimagined through a singularly forward-looking creative vision.
Artist Spotlight
“NO MORE” by Amanda Holley connects healing, awakening, and survival
“NO MORE“ carries that kind of emotional weight, and some songs feel like they come from lived experience but reach for something bigger. Amanda Holley blends R&B and soul, turning a lifetime of survival into a vision of healing, awakening, and the determination to move beyond what caused the pain.
“NO MORE“ is a healing anthem for people who have gone through bad experiences and reached a place of higher awareness, but it’s also an emotionally charged protest. The duality is introspective and outward-looking at the same time, turning personal survival into a broader declaration that some experiences, conditions, or cycles should end.
Holley had a premonition of the song six months before the world went into global shutdown. In the vocal booth, working out melodies with her collaborators, she pictured people in the streets. Those images were hard to imagine at the time, but subsequent events would make them painfully familiar.
“NO MORE“ is given a particularly contemplative underpinning by the context. The identity of R&B and soul leaves room for emotion. The song’s themes link survival, awakening, resistance, and the need for change. Amanda Holley is an artist using music to process personal endurance and a broader sense of social awakening. It’s got a complicated significance, and its release feels like a glimpse of a moment when personal intuition and public reality collided in an unexpected way.
Photo Credit: Yulia Shusharina
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