Justice – Stress

Tuesday May 19, 2009 · By

Gang violence is frequently romanticized in US culture, but it’s all about dealing drugs to get rich to get girls to get happy. Violence is seen as a necessary part of protecting your turf, a way to get ahead in the whole getting rich thing.

Here, we have a counterpoint to this. This is violence for the sake of violence. This is Clockwork Orange-level ultraviolence. While watching rappers flash their bling and tell us how tough their crews are is entertainment, this is disturbing. It’s uncomfortable, foreign, and almost too real. It’s the definition of senseless.

Why does the video invoke such a strong reaction? One big reason is that it’s easy to imagine yourself as a victim. What can you really do to defend yourself from a large group of thugs with no real goals other than mayhem? And of course there are lots of bystanders doing nothing, which is exactly what you’d be doing if you saw somebody across the street getting attacked, which makes you feel just great, right?

The track itself provides good tension as the soundtrack, and since it clocks in at almost 7 minutes long, it almost induces fatigue by the end. The fact that they seem to get away with it only adds to the unsettling feeling.

---

---