Fat Fingers

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Fat Fingers
clipping.
publication October 28, 2016
length 2:26
Genre (s) Industrial hip-hop
text Daveed Diggs
music William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes

Fat Fingers is a song from the American experimental hip-hop trio clipping. The title was released at the end of October 2016 as part of the playlist project 30 Days, 30 Songs and is directed against the Republican presidential candidate and eventual election winner Donald Trump .

background

Donald Trump at an election rally in Phoenix in October 2016

The initiators of 30 Days, 30 Songs around author Dave Eggers originally contacted Clipping with the request to make the title Knees on the Ground , published in 2014 via SoundCloud , available for their project. The trio refused - on the grounds that the text about an unarmed African American who died as a result of police violence was too serious for the playlist. Instead, Daveed Diggs , William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes contributed a new song called Fat Fingers ( English for "fat fingers"). Clipping practice political criticism according to their own statements in the form of satire , irony and " your-mom-jokes ". They use the language of battle rap and present the title in the style of a diss track .

"Donald Trump has time and again proven himself to have the temperament of a petulant, whiny child. In the world of hip-hop, that behavior finds its most visible expression in the forms of battle rap and diss songs. We decided to address our attack in those languages. "

“Donald Trump has proven time and again that he has the disposition of a petulant, whiny child. In the world of hip-hop this behavior finds its most visible expression in the forms of battle rap and diss tracks. We decided to carry out our attack in these languages. "

- clipping.

content

The beat for Fat Fingers is made up of percussive noise elements of an industrial nature, which were produced, among other things, by punching a fist on metallic surfaces. Disordered children's voices can be heard in the background, creating the impression of a schoolyard atmosphere. Inspired by statements by prominent Americans that they want to leave the country if Trump wins the election, Clipping incorporated the melodies of foreign national anthems in two places ( God Defend New Zealand after the first verse and O Canada as outro).

In terms of text, the two verses take up biographical details as well as findings from Trump's 2015/16 election campaign and sometimes exaggerate them in the manner typical of Diss tracks. Among other things, Trump's massive Twitter activity (“too much twitter talk to be trusted with the button”), his migration policy (“want to see immigration go down / elect his ass and watch most sane Americans skip town”), a short Record of misogynous statements that became public earlier (“and keep grabbing vaginas / cause won't no one give him pussy”) and his negative attitude towards abortions (“and you could say goodbye to Roe v. Wade ”).

Fat Fingers also references several classics of the rap genre, particularly the Diss track. The twice repeated intro line “You'll never have dinner with the president” is an allusion to Ice Cube's sentence “I'll never have dinner with the president” in No Vaseline , with which he met his former NWA colleague Eazy-E criticized with then President George HW Bush . The first line of the second verse "First off fuck your tricks and the clique you claim" is a quote from 2Pac's hit 'Em Up' addressed to Biggie Smalls . Towards the end of the first verse there is an allusion to the refrain of Disses Ether directed by Nas against Jay-Z . The first words of each line result in a sentence, in the case of Fat Fingers "She will not lose", in German "Sie ( Hillary Clinton , note) will not lose":

clipping. - Fat Fingers
(She) Fuck with your soul like ether
(Will) Teach you to speak you know her
(Not) Own party jumps ship daily
(Lose) Prove that you lost already

Nas - Ether (2001)
(I) Fuck with your soul like ether
(Will) Teach you - the king - you know you
(Not) God's son across the belly
(Lose) I Prove you lost already

A music video published on YouTube contains the full text and a cell phone recording showing a man smashing Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a pickaxe. Such acts of vandalism occurred both before and after Trump's election as president.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tom Breihan: clipping. - “Fat Fingers”. Stereogum, October 28, 2016, accessed on July 22, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Day 19, Song 25 - Clipping. "Fat Fingers". 30, Days, 30 Songs , October 28, 2016, accessed July 22, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Ether - Nas. Genius.com , accessed July 23, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Ryan Parker: Trump's Hollywood Walk of Fame Star Destroyed Again. The Hollywood Reporter , July 25, 2018, accessed July 23, 2020 .