Joy As Resistance on JD the MC's Product Of The World

The Product Of The World album cover, by Juan "J.R.I.M." Ibarra, is a pretty perfect visual representation of what the project sounds like.

Born and raised in Texas but now based in Colorado, hip-hop artist JD the M.C. sees himself as “A product of the world,” recognizing that his identity (like most) can’t be neatly attributed to a single, isolated culture. His father, born in Pierdas Negras, Coahulia, Mexico, and his mother, born in Colorado, each passed their experiences and traditions down to him, plus each community he’s lived in (from small town Texas, to Boulder, to Denver) has left its own impression. And that’s not even incorporating everyone else he’s crossed paths with in a lifetime. The name of his debut album, Product Of The World, is a nod to this network of global connectivity. We all contain traces of the people and places we’ve encountered–for better or worse. Product Of The World delves into the better and the worse, acknowledging positive cultural exchanges possible in an interconnected world while scrutinizing the insidious reach of oppressive power structures. Embodying the phrase “Joy is an act of resistance,”** JD somehow balances a grim outlook with defiantly upbeat energy. On seven simple yet powerful tracks, JD delivers punchy, clever bars with an unambiguous message of decolonization, anticapitalism, and collective compassion. 

Boom bap percussion provides the bones for Product Of The World’s instrumentals, but each song takes a unique shape around this skeleton. The syncopated piano rhythm on “Don’t Worry About It” gives the beat a ragtime-esque, happy-go-lucky spin that invites listeners into the project. “BITNBP” builds tension with high-pitched strings, exploding into a symphonic overlay of strings and horns during the chorus. A tribute to his Mexican-American heritage and a declaration of solidarity with immigrants, “FUCK ICE” features fingerstyle guitar and accordion, drawing on Norteño and Ranchera musical traditions. “Everybody Stoned” (which is exactly 4 minutes and 20 seconds, I see you JD) has a relaxed, dreamy melody, combining gentle jazz guitar and piano with a whisper of a female vocal sample. Like a minimalist duet, “Civil War” pairs the boom bap drums found throughout Product Of The World with muted keyboard chords, funneling the listener’s attention towards JD’s lyrics.

The counterpoint rhythms, use of line breaks, and tempo variations in JD’s bars (plus the rasp in his voice) call to mind J. Cole’s flow, with a hint of Mac Miller’s warmth. If it were a dance, it would look like an intricate pattern of slides punctuated with quick stutter-steps. However, the juxtaposition of JD’s sunny demeanor, easy-going delivery, and incisive, politically-charged lyrics takes me back to Chance the Rapper’s pivotal album Acid Rap. Like Acid Rap, Product Of The World smiles (or perhaps more accurately, smirks) in the face of abject misery. Acid Rap is one of those albums that acts as a time machine, instantly transporting me back to summer 2013, and Product Of The World aligns closely with the sonic trends of that era. (I’m talking about the early 2010s youth movement in rap, when a new generation of lyrically introspective rappers emerged, ditching the 2000s synth-heavy club sound for slightly mellower, instrumentation-driven beats.) If that wave of hip-hop doesn’t appeal to you anymore (or if it never did), parts of Product Of The World could sound dated to you. Personally, those were the years when I really fell in love with hip-hop, so I always welcome the nostalgia. And unfortunately, the same injustices that Chance lamented on Acid Rap are as prominent today as they were twelve years ago when the album dropped. I’m curious to see how Product Of The World ages, both in regards to its subject matter and sound, and if it will one day induce the same time-traveling effect as Acid Rap does today.  

Influenced by artists like J. Cole (obviously), Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, 2Pac, A Tribe Called Quest, JID, and Saba (who I can definitely imagine on beats like these), JD follows in many of their footsteps as a socially conscious lyricist. Product Of The World reckons with all-American evils, each song expressing difficult yet thought-provoking truths aimed at an unmistakable target. “Everybody Stoned,” which explores the various cultural meanings, uses and consequences of cannabis use, addresses addiction (“Drug addiction is a crime unless you’re a celebrity”) and the racialized “War on Drugs” (“The war on drugs is a war on us”). “$egregated” skewers corporate greed, capitalism, the myth of “hustle culture” (“Keeping my eye on the bag is giving me bags under my eyes”) and class stratification (“We just segregated with dollars…separated with commas”). Similarly, “I Need More” tackles gluttony and materialism from a bottom-up perspective, even implicating JD himself as complicit in upholding capitalist ideals when he breaks the fourth wall to say, “I need some cool things I can say in the chorus.” 

“F**K ICE,” an unflinching takedown of America’s inhumane and abusive treatment of immigrants (which JD recently performed at a protest held outside the GEO ICE facility in Aurora), and “BITNBP,” which is an acronym for “Blue is the new Black Plague,” are JD’s most explicitly political critiques. “BITNBP” contextualizes the epidemic of police brutality by comparing it to one of the most infamous contagions in human history, emphasizing the danger, devastation, and sheer scale of police violence. These two songs convey JD’s cultural pride, while positioning cops and ICE agents (really just more cops) as the de facto enemies not only of immigrants, but of all close-knit communities. Layered vocals on the choruses (recorded with several friends all chanting into a mic) of both songs point to a movement larger than JD himself, reflecting the community behind JD and the communal nature of everything he does. Including a Spanish-language verse on “F**K ICE” is an intentional, extra “fuck you” cherry on top. When we talk about joy as a form of resistance, it doesn’t mean that all happiness or pleasure constitutes a revolution. It refers to the loud, unapologetic celebration of something that an oppressor is actively trying to extinguish. It’s rapping in Spanish over a Mexican folk-inflected instrumental and naming the song “F**K ICE.” 

After listening to Product Of The World, I was reminded of the sociological concept of “glocalization,” a hybrid of globalization and localization (Popularized by sociologist Roland Robertson, who learned the concept from Japanese economists). Basically, it’s the idea that as local cultures are shaped by global forces, they simultaneously impact the wider world as parts that make up its whole. Glocalization suggests that the relationship between local and global is a feedback loop rather than a top-down relationship where influence only flows in one direction. 

Within the realm of activism and organizing, glocalization translates to a belief that global and local social issues are inseparable, and must be addressed at every level. Though daunting, that means it’s possible for smaller, more localized cultures to sway the world at large. Uniting people through shared joy, spreading a message of communal solidarity, and using hope as a shield in the face of your enemy can be powerful forms of disruption, whether they take place outside Aurora’s GEO ICE facility or an international platform. If joy is an act of resistance, JD releasing Product Of The World is an act of joy. 

Product Of The World is available now on all major music platforms. To celebrate the release and mission of Product Of The World, JD is headlining One World, One Love: An Alignment of the People at Black Buzzard (in Denver's Oskar Blues) this Saturday, August 30. The 18+ show will feature a bunch of supporting acts: Briana Jannyne, Consequenc3, A$cension, Bojack Carter, The Sun Vishnu, Greed, MARCO GALINDO!, Luzid Music Group, Jade IAM, and Binta Zang. Doors open at 7 p.m. and tickets are $20 in advance. See you there?

**This exact phrase was coined by American poet Toi Derricote in her poem “The Telly Cycle,” but the idea comes from the activist and writer Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Uses of The Erotic.”