Over the last four years, comedy-hiphop artiste Lil Dicky’s works have ranged from the chucklesome to the near-hilarious. Last year, with ‘Freaky Friday’ where he is merrily trapped in Christopher Brown’s body and living the singer-actor’s popularity, didn’t he really crease us up?
The point is Lil Dicky has built a following largely with humour that thrives on an almost-drollish self-mockery and explicit content. And the pertinent question is: Were the primary tools of his trade helpful in the making of ‘Earth’? Released on April 19, Earth deals with environmental issues, especially climate change. It’s obviously a weighty subject and can’t be treated with levity.
“I think he has certainly done it very responsibly. He has the theme sorted out pretty well. The song has the Lil Dicky touch of humour. There are a few explicit lines, but too few to really count, and these have been tucked inside and are not exactly in the face,” says Jack Styles, a Chennai-based rapper who is with Rap Machines.
There is a rhythmic flow to the music that makes for easy listening. Lil Dicky’s form of hip-hop is usually laced with elements of pop. Earth is however an out-and-out pop offering, which provides the bandwidth to easily fit in a variety of celebrity-voices.
The massive exercise to involve the creme de la creme of the music industry puts Earth straightaway in the league of grand productions. It had to have such a line-up to add to the grandeur of the theme, and the cause it supports. The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation is on board and will distribute profits from Earth among groups working towards finding solutions to climate change. “Getting Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande together for a project alone will qualify as a great achievement, but you have two dozen celebrity-musicians out here,” says Styles.
In the credits that appear at the end of the song, there are displays of animals, even a plant and a microscopic organism, accompanied by the names of the celebrity-singers who lent their voice to them.
The fact that many of those musicians that Generations Y & Z hold as icons — Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Halsey, Charlie Puth, Brendon Urie, Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa, Hailee Steinfeld, Shawn Mendes, Meghan Trainor, Lil Jon, Rita Ora, Tory Lanez, Miguel, Katy Perry and Lil Yachty — are in the line-up, will provide the song with the necessary connect with a mammoth section of listeners. That the star line-up includes Snoop Dogg, Adam Levine, the Backstreet Boys and Sia only means that Generation X will also find the song ringing with familiar voices.
Since its release, Earth has attracted comparisons with the 1985 song ‘We Are The World’ with reviewers pointing out the parade of star-singers as well as the charity element in both. ‘We Are The World’ had the charity supergroup United Support of Artists for Africa rallying together to get humanitarian aid to the countries in that continent. Similar approaches and objectives apart, ‘We Are The World’ was a couple of yards quicker, to borrow a cricketing term, and there was a timbre to it that made it more rousing.
That should not take away anything from the charm of Earth. There are people — that includes Styles — who will like the fact animals were matched with singers, and presented in a funny manner, to take a grand idea forward in an engaging manner.
