Earth

Earth 

In April of 2019, just a few days before Earth Day, comedian rapper Lil Dicky released a fight-climate-change anthem complete with an amazing music video and 30 plus artist cameos. While most people would not consider someone with the stage name “Lil Dicky” to be the first one to make a theme song for fighting climate change, I find that inspiring. Someone who has built their career on comedic, sometimes offensive, and satirical work decides to use their fame and platform to bring attention to an important issue in the world, while still sticking to his comedic (and still slightly inappropriate) style.

This song is longer than usual (and slightly inappropriate as mentioned before) so I’ve decided to highlight what I consider to be the most relevant (and least vulgar) lyrics:

What up, world? It's your boy, just one of the guys down here

Well, I could be more specific

Uh, I'm a human, and I just wanted to, you know

For the sake of all of us earthlings out there

Just wanted to say:

We love the Earth, it is our planet

We love the Earth, it is our home

Keeping in style with rap music’s narrative tendencies, he starts out singing about humans loving the Earth. 

Hey, I'm a zebra

No one knows what I do, but I look pretty cool

Am I white or black?

The featured artists start rolling in as different creatures ranging from a zebra (Ariana Grande) to common fungus (Hailee Steinfield) to marijuana (Snoop Dog of course)

We love you, India

We love you, Africa

We love the Chinese

We forgive you, Germany

In addition to promoting the environment, he also shows how much we should love the other people we share this planet with. We all share the Earth and it takes all of us to take care of it. (of course he still keeps some humorous  and possibly offensive tones with “we forgive you, Germany”)

But these days, it's like we don't know how to act

All these shootings, pollution, we under attack on ourselves

Like, let's all just chill (Hey), respect what we built (Hey)

Like look at the internet! It's cracking as hell

Here we see a shift in the lyrics from appreciation of the Earth to putting some blame on humans and our actions. We all share the same place to live on but we chose to fight with each other instead of fighting to save it. 

C'mon everybody, I know we're not all the same

But we're living on the same Earth (We love you, we love you)

Have you ever been to Earth?

Everyone who is listening has been to Earth, Ariana (We love you, we love you)

We're not making music for aliens here

Are we gonna die?

You know what, Bieber? We might die (We love you, we love you)

I'm not going to lie to you

I mean, there's so many people out here who don't think Global Warming's a real thing

You know? We gotta save this planet

We're being stupid

Unless we get our shit together now

In the last verse we get a call to action: get our shit together and save the planet.

Proceeds from this song went to the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation to ensure that they went to various nature conservation charities and organizations. Lil Dicky calls this “the most important thing I’ll ever do” in an interview with Times. Because even famous rappers worry about their part in saving the plant. 

In addition to the music video, Lil Dicky also helped to create a website, https://welovetheearth.org, that gives people tips on how to best help save the Earth. It also includes all the organisms that the various artists vocalized and their importance to the environment (yes marijuana is good for the planet). But here’s the amazing music video! (but be warned that it is most definitely not censored)