Don't Let it Go (Urthboy Flip)
Sietta x Jaytee
Elefant Traks
Released March 6, 2014
Free download
Hip-hop artist Urthboy has hit back at Australia's asylum seeker policy with a free song released online. The rapper drops some radical rhymes over a beat that originally appeared on the new album by bass-heavy Darwin duo Sietta, which was released on his label Elefant Traks this month.
Urthboy is hitting out at the Coalition government this time, but he has been equally scathing of Labor government policy. Commenting on offshore processing in 2012, he told Green Left Weekly the ALP's policy was "like another nail in the coffin of our conscience".
"Like a hammer that is just beating down mercilessly on us having enlightenment. It is beating down on our path towards enlightenment. Pushing us back. You feel like as you get older and as we grow as people we learn, but [when] there are all these things, you feel like it just makes you question about whether you go forward and improve as a people.
"And I haven’t lived for hundreds of years, I don’t have that context of how we constantly repeat ourselves with the same prejudicial views that are effectively the same that humanity has always had, you know, mistrust of strangers, motivated by fear, all these things that manifest in modern life, the same way that they would have always affected us.
"But at the same time we develop technologies and we learn a little bit more about science that enlightens us on so many different levels. But then there are things that, politically speaking, it just makes you depressed."
On the new song, he raps:
Put 'em on a one way trip to Manus
Throw a billion on the boatloads make 'em vanish
Wash the blood off our hands that inflict the damage
We can pretend we care when our hearts are savage
The video, directed by Dan Ilich, features footage of the Australian Navy "turning back the boats". Urthboy thanked his fans for spreading the song via social media. "We made it with zero budget, including the video," he said. "So you sharing it around is a BIG DEAL."
Read the Green Left Weekly interview with Urthboy here.
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