A U.S. Senate Campaign Made a Hip Hop Album and dropped its first single: "Time's Up for the Billionaires"
The Joe Tache for U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts has made an original full-length Socialist Hip Hop album, "Time's Up for the Billionaires" featuring more than a dozen artists from across the state. The music video for the title track is out now; the full album drops Thursday, August 27, with the live album release party the same night at Artists For Humanity in South Boston. Born out of the campaign's "Sounds of a Socialist Future" event in April, the album puts the Senate campaign in a tradition of freedom songs that includes artists from the civil rights era like Nina Simone and Sam Cooke to more contemporary artists like Public Enemy, dead prez, and Kendrick Lamar.
[Boston, MA] — Joe Tache is running for U.S. Senate as a third party socialist candidate, and his campaign has done something no modern campaign has ever done: it made an album.
Time's Up for the Billionaires is an original, full-length revolutionary Hip Hop record - executive produced by Paul Willis, engineered by Joi Beatz, and featuring more than a dozen artists from across the Boston area, from veterans like Jonathan Gramling, The Kid Kung Fu, Karim and Solmaria to rising stars like MaceyOMaze, João Paulo, Sol E Soul, and Messi Amaru’Khan. Javi, the youngest artist on the album, made the album a multigenerational family affair by not only rapping on the album but also producing a song for his father’s legendary political Hip Hop group Foundation Movement, whose last release was 20 years ago just before Javi was born.
The album’s sound is raw, political, and unmistakably Boston: hard-hitting boom bap and soulful, sharp lyrics in the tradition of Nina Simone, Sam Cooke, dead prez and Kendrick Lamar, made by artists rapping about the problems in our society like the cost of living and the wars waged abroad and against Black and immigrant communities at home.
"This album both denounces the status quo and the situation we find ourselves in, but also proposes an alternative - and that's the alternative we're fighting for in our socialist campaign and our socialist movement," said Tache. "I'm very excited about it."
The music video for the title track is out now at youtube.com/watch?v=2ja3dSFBOQ4, with the single streaming on Spotify, Tidal, and Untitled.
"All art is inherently political," said MaceyOMaze. "You've got to pick a side, or the sides will pick you - they'll take your narrative and they'll write it for you."
The album grew out of Sounds of a Socialist Future, an April event where the campaign brought together artists and organizers around a question most campaigns never ask: what does the world we're fighting for sound like? The sessions that followed became the record.
"It’s a revolutionary love letter," said Jonathan Gramling, who worked on the record. "On this project we talk about revolution, why we think it's necessary, what it'll take to get there - to build and sustain the next thing."
Campaigns have long borrowed from culture through walk-on songs, celebrity endorsements, licensed anthems. Instead of renting culture, the Joe Tache for U.S. Senate campaign is rooted in the working class communities of Massachusetts that are building it. Boston-area artists came together to make music that is their own interpretation of the campaign’s call for collective action to replace the profit-first system of capitalism with the people-first system of socialism.
"This record is powerful. It's scary - for the billionaires and all those people in power," said Willis.
The album arrives as the campaign hits a new gear. Tache, running with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, is the only socialist in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts and was the first candidate to qualify for the November ballot after an all-volunteer effort collected more than 20,000 signatures in two weeks. The campaign has raised over $243,000 in individual contributions and does not take money from corporations or PACs of any kind.
"We're bringing together so many talented local artists," said Tache, "to merge that talent, and the universal language that is music, with this movement that we're building to transform our society, and to provide the people of Massachusetts with the lives we deserve."
The album Time's Up for the Billionaires releases Thursday, August 27. Listen to the first single and find streaming links at tache4ma.com/album. The full album arrives Thursday, August 27, alongside a live album release party that night at Artists For Humanity, 100 W 2nd St, Boston — tickets at tache4.ma/timesup.
The full tracklist and album credits can be found here: Tracklist & Credits.