Recession Roundelays

As part of an ongoing effort to avoid all China and/or Olympic news stories, today I read an article on the state of the British economy. It’s mostly conjecture and graph interpretation, but I was touched by the following passage:

Denmark has the dubious distinction of being the first developed country to move into recession and the latest figures from Germany suggest that the economy may have declined in the second quarter. It is possible that the eurozone economy as a whole will have contracted during the quarter.

Having just been in the States, where all anyone is talking about is job cuts and gas prices, I think it’s clear that a large chunk of the world is heading for hard times. The music there has already started to reflect this, so I thought why not assemble a few recent recession-inspired songs in the hopes that they might soothe us or at least distract us. I’ll try to add more as new ones pop up. It’d be cool to get some from elsewhere. Share em if you got em…

Young Jeezy feat. Kanye West - Put on

This one is more about the video than the content of the song, but the video is strong and Jeezy’s new album is even called The Recession so….

Big Boi feat. Mary J Blidge - Something’s gotta give

Two of my favorite artists speaking on the problems of the material world. Good beat, Obama shout out and everything. Love this song.

Janelle Monáe - Mr. President

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No video for this one yet, but this is actually my favorite song of the three. I can not say enough about Ms. Janelle Monáe. I’m gonna make a tribute post to her one of these days. She is a true original, and I strongly urge you to check her shit out. She’s released a couple of EPs that are floating around cyberspace, but she signed to Bad Boy a little while ago, so hopefully she’ll take off properly soon. Her new album METROPOLIS: THE CHASE SUITE (SPECIAL EDITION) is dropping on August 12, according to her website….