Rapper Lil Baby’s new single begins to address “The Bigger Picture”

“The Bigger Picture” is significant and stands out because it strongly rejects the idea employed by identity politics that there is an unbridgeable gap between blacks and whites, it begins to form a critique of capitalism and it shows the development of a popular artist beginning to take the times and his art seriously.

However, the song’s suggestion that voting is the answer to all the great problems is extremely weak. First of all, it comes in the midst of enormous, multi-racial protests whose objective logic clearly indicates that popular struggle against all the existing institutions is where the way forward lies. Second, the call to “Vote” is most often in entertainment industry circles at the moment virtual short-hand for “Vote Democratic” or “Vote for Anyone but Trump.” It is no accident that Lil Baby recently announced he is working with Democratic Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms—who has openly defended the police after the recent Atlanta police killing of Rayshard Brooks—to put together a police reform plan “for Atlanta to the whole world.”