In its wisdom, Code Pink, the antiwar agitators fond of disrupting congressional hearings, decided to rap about how controversial private-security company Blackwater "makes a killing out of killing." Lead emcee and Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, alas, cannot kill the track. You are guaranteed never to hear this on a Gangsta Grillz mixtape.
In just the past week alone, we've taken our share of shots at Blackwater. And the material that Benjamin presents in her dis track is familiar to the readers of this blog or Jeremy Scahill or any of Blackwater's many critical chroniclers. There's its guards' culpability for the 2007 shooting of civilians in Iraq's Nisour Square; its clandestine work for the CIA; and its uncanny resilience at winning government contracts despite its notoriety. Whatever the merits of the substantive case, we've got to say: this is going too far.
Does Blackwater really deserve the sight and sound of Benjamin bobbing her head and waving her arms like a fish out of its cultural waters, spitting, "They got a mercenary here, a mercenary there/ Erik Prince'll send a mercenary" – wait for it! – "a-ny-where"? Must it suffer through a relentless AABB structure and a mid-tempo synth-driven beat, with no variety and no flow? Should it have to watch an ersatz-contractor, in blue polo shirt and wraparound shades, pantomime killing people and making it rain on himself? And what, no Cartman-with-an-AK reference? Cube's "AK-47 is the tool" line in Straight Outta Compton" sets it right up for you!
Not even the presence of D.C. rapper Head-Roc on the chorus can save Benjamin. Jim McMahon's "Super Bowl Shuffle" verse is officially no longer in the record books for most cringe-inducing mic performance. Don't expect Blackwater to issue a response track, awesome as that might be.
Still, Benjamin deserves respect for at least one aspect of the video. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in February, a former Blackwater employee allegedly threatened Code Pink activist Tighe Barry. By all means, stick up for your people. But it's almost like you're courting disaster when ambitious opportunists move into a treacherous field that requires highly-trained professionals for mission success and there's no one to provide them with oversight.
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