“Scream My Name Like a Protest”

Abstract

Track 8.0 speculates about R&B’s relationship to politics with a capital P, since the genre is now often positioned as completely lacking political vision. As the two tracks amplify, this is neither right nor OK, seeing that (a) current R&B artists have used their recordings and music videos to bring attention to Black Lives Matter or the prison-industrial complex and (b) the private, the interpersonal, and the erotic are not outside the purview of the political.