Key Change: Hanif Abdurraqib on The Clash

My guest today is Hanif Abdurraqib, https://www.abdurraqib.com/ a poet, cultural critic, and New York Times bestselling author of books like They Can't Kill us Until They Kill Us, https://twodollarradio.com/products/they-cant-kill-us Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/go-ahead-in-the-rain-hanif-abdurraqib/1129923020 and A Little Devil in America, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/592315/a-little-devil-in-america-by-hanif-abdurraqib/ which won the Andrew Carnegie medal for nonfiction. I've been a guest on Hanif's podcast, Object of Sound, https://object-of-sound.simplecast.com/ and I just love reading and hearing his thoughts about music. When I first started toying with the idea for this Key Change series, I was specifically excited about the idea that it could give me the chance to have Hanif on as a guest. For more, visit songexploder.net/keychange https://songexploder.net/keychange. You can listen to "Lost in the Supermarket" by The Clash here. https://song.link/us/i/684812017

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:10Speaker 01

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• 1:12Speaker 02

  I would like to be in awe of something that I did not know existed when I woke up that morning.

• 1:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This is Key Change, where I talk to fascinating people about the music that transformed their lives. And my guest today is Hanif Abdurraqib, a poet, cultural critic, and New York Times bestselling author of books like They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Go Ahead in the Rain, Notes to a Tribe Called Quest, and A Little Devil in America, which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for nonfiction. I've been a guest on Hanif's podcast, Object of Sound, and I just love reading and hearing his thoughts about music. When I first started toying with the idea for this Key Change series, I was specifically excited about the idea that it could give me the chance to have Hanif on as a guest. So, Hanif, thank you so much for joining me.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:59Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I feel like you have an encyclopedic knowledge of music, and I know that there's a lot of music you care deeply about. Which song are we going to talk about?

• 2:06Speaker 02

  A song from The Clash, from the classic album London Calling, the song "Lost in the Supermarket."

• 2:12Hrishikesh Hirway?

  When did you first hear the song?

• 2:13Speaker 02

  OK, so I was excited to talk about this because to talk about this now feels like I am describing another planet entirely. But for folks who grew up a certain way, of a certain age, in a certain time, They may recall a point in time where the public libraries had listening stations, which for me, in my corner of East Columbus, Ohio, it felt like a spaceship. And I thought about it like a space. Not only did it aesthetically look like a spaceship in these libraries, where it was like these pods that were all lined up next to each other and you would sit in them. You know, you put on headphones and then you would transport yourself to some elsewhere that was defined by the musical experience you were immersing yourself in.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  And so in Columbus, Ohio, on the east side, Livingston branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, I, as a lonely and anxious kid, loved these listening pods because it was like you were sealed off from the rest of the world. The other thing about these listening pods is that if you were a person who was not wrecked by your own anxieties, as I was, you could curate your own listening experience. You know, these were back in the days of CDs, so this is a CD changer. The CD changers would be filled by the workers at the library, which meant that you were at the mercy of someone else's tastes or interests or excitements. Right? Most people would say, will you take out this CD so I could put in this CD that I like? But I was always so anxious and so nervous to do that. I don't know why.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  I mean, I was a kid, I was 11, 12 years old, but I was like, well, what if they laugh at the thing I want to put on or what if they? And so every day that I went to the library, I was very much at the mercy of whatever the library worker placed into the CD changer. And so I first heard Lost in the Supermarket because one day I went into the library and the first album in the CD changer was London Calling. And I didn't want to ask anyone to change it. And about a couple of songs into the record, I didn't want anyone to change it. I was so enthralled by it. And, um, you know, Lost in the Supermarket is maybe track eight or nine. And so I was pretty deep into the album when it struck me.

• 4:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I remember going to the library and listening to CDs, but you'd have to go get the CD, like figure out what you wanted. There wasn't like a preloaded CD player or CD changer where, I love that. It's like your librarians are more like the folks at the record store who say, listen to this.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  I could tell when someone really cared, when someone was like, I am going to really thoughtfully. Select five CDs that tell a story. And this also mirrored my life. I mean, I'm the youngest of four in a house with people who had very defined and clear music tastes, very different music tastes. And I was always at the mercy of everyone else's, you know, when you get in the car as a 10 year old, if you're in your older brother's car, you're not touching the radio, you know?

• 5:08Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  And so the library experience was an extension of that. And my finding of the Clash was a great extension of even that, because as much as I love the Clash now, I would have come to them much later, I think, had I not come to them that day in the library.

• 5:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Were you born in Columbus?

• 5:25Speaker 02

  I was. I was born east Columbus, Ohio, to parents who listened to so much music that I sometimes feel like my first sonic memories are not of their own voices. They're certainly not of their speaking voices. I think I have this memory embedded in my head that is an early memory of my mother singing Whitney Houston.

• 5:44Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And you're the youngest of your siblings?

• 5:46Speaker 02

  I'm the youngest, youngest of four. So I have a brother who is 11, about 11 years older than me, a sister who is nine years older than me, and a brother who I am about, you know, like 17 months apart from. And so, you know, the other great thing about my childhood is that I was coming up with older siblings and being exposed to music in a way where your older siblings were saying, not even really intentionally forcing things on you, but saying, I heard something that I like and I am going to listen to it in your presence. That's kind of delightful.

• 6:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did you think that they were cool? Did you like their tastes?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Well, the thing is, I didn't know anything, you know? So I liked everything. I liked everything that anyone who I thought, who I wanted to impress liked, you know?

• 6:31Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  My brother and sister, my sister was listening to grunge and punk and my brother was listening to like metal and of course hip hop. Hip hop was the anchoring genre that kind of brought us together.

• 6:42Hrishikesh Hirway?

  When did you start going to the library?

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Well, the fascinating thing is the library didn't exist for me at first, like literally physically didn't exist. It was built when I was eight or nine years old and to have a library walking distance from my house was like such a huge deal, you know?

• 6:59Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you remember when it opened and was it a big event?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Oh, it was huge. It was massive, you know, it was now, I think, like library openings perhaps don't have as much fanfare, but this was, this was huge, you know? I remember it because it was next to a rec center where if you were a kid in my neighborhood, that's where you played basketball, that's where you took swim classes, et cetera, et cetera. And the library opening that day, I was at a, a summer camp at the rec center and we got to have a break in our day to go to the library and see the grand opening and there were Teddy Grahams. I distinctly remember getting a bag of Teddy Grahams and we got to walk around it. And it's funny because as we speak, the library is being renovated for the first time since it opened.

• 7:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  I drove by the other day and it's closed down for renovations, but when it opened, it felt like it was like state of the art because it was at that time, especially for my, the neighborhood I grew up in, which didn't get things like that, you know?

• 7:53Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  But I did not start going alone until I was maybe 11, you know? That's when my parents, I think, trusted me to walk down the street and go to the library and spend time there. They saw it as a safer space. And for me, that was one of the only places I could go on my own. And so it represented this real sense of freedom.

• 8:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Okay, so you come into the library and you sit at this listening station. Did you know what CD you were going to be listening to when you hit play that day?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  No, you never knew because you couldn't see, you could see, if folks remember old school CD changers, you could see the kind of silver edge of the CD.

• 8:30Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  But you couldn't see what the CD was. When I pressed play and heard The Clash, I didn't even know I was listening to The Clash. I didn't know who The Clash was. I knew I was listening to the songs that I liked, but I had no idea who was making them.

• 8:44Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did you have at that time, any kind of context? You mentioned, you know, that like hip hop was sort of the anchoring genre and but you all listened to other stuff as well. Like, at 11 years old, did you have an understanding of different genres? And could you place The Clash into some category that made sense to you?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, I my genre understanding at that point was pretty in depth. And I think I most likened The Clash to like the louder stuff I'd heard my brothers and sisters listening to. My brother really liked metal. My sister would listen to a lot of punk and Riot Girls stuff. But additionally, my mother was listening to like, South African music. And I actually, I was like, oh, the elements of percussion in here don't sound that far off from Mary and McCabe records or Hugh Masakela records. Or there's a real relentless propulsion and chugging along to the energy of it. Yeah, I always say that I wish I could go back and hear London Calling the song for the first time.

• 9:44Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  I mean, hearing that song for the first time was like, as an 11 year old, it felt like, you know, it felt like I was being dragged to the edge of a cliff and being shown a world I did not know existed.

• 9:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah. One of the things that is interesting to me is that like, that's the first song on London Calling.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:01Hrishikesh Hirway?

  But you've chosen to focus on Lost in the Supermarket, which, as you said, is like, track eight on the album. So I'm wondering, like, what happened at that moment? What was it about that song and when that came on that felt transformative?

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Every payday for my parents, which is every other Friday, we would go grocery shopping. We could afford to get groceries once every two weeks. We'd get groceries that would last a two weeks, and then you'd go grocery shopping again. And the kids, usually me and my other brother, we would make the shopping list. We'd get home from school, make a shopping list, and it would be a pleasure and a delight to go out grocery shopping with my mother on Friday night. And she would break the list out, you know, equal parts. We would go find things. And there was this real level of autonomy in that process of saying, my mother saying, here's 15 things, you go find them. And then, you know, at the end of it all, we would get to get ourselves a treat, as

• 11:00Speaker 02

  long as it was under a dollar, which back then, you know, those boxes of Little Debbie treats were a dollar. But what I'm most saying is that, like, when I was a child, I never considered myself lost in a place. I always considered myself at the mercy of my own eagerness and curiosities, which would lead me to something that felt familiar and good. I love the song Lost in the Supermarket because it was the first song I heard. I didn't even understand it thematically, right? The song actually means something different than what it, than what I received it as, which is just the way that music goes. The way you receive it changes as you age or changes as you understand more. But as an 11 year old receiving it, I thought, oh, wow.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  This is a song that makes me feel like I feel on a Friday, wandering a supermarket, shopping with my mother, but not with my mother. Shopping with my mother, but not alongside my mother. And in those moments, you know, we used to go to Meyer and I would feel like the whole store was mine, even on a Friday night, if it was crowded, even if it was crowded, it would feel like the entire store was mine. And that song feels like, to me, even as I listen to it now, my first instinct is wow. Sonically, in the kind of whimsy that is presented in the lyrics, it feels like this is a small child wandering aisles that are taller than they are, looking up and feeling like they own it all.

• 12:20Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Huh. Do you feel like there's a before and after in your own life from hearing it?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, I sometimes think with songs, there is the difference between how it moves you in an emotional way and then what it is presenting in a literal way. And it's, I'm still kind of moved to this sense of, you know, Lost in the Supermarket, the lyrics, strummer's writing about growing up in the suburbs and not being able to see over the hedges in his parents' home and trying to escape to a place. And so there's all those emotional elements, but also I don't remember the transformation point, but I remember being a teenager and I had that song on a mixtape for a girl I liked. And we were talking about the clash and, and I was like, yeah, you know, Lost in the supermarket.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  I love it. It makes me feel like a kid when I would go grocery shop with my mom and this and this and this. And she was like, yeah, yeah, sure. But also that song is about how much consumerism fucking sucks.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  And it was like I was hearing the lyrics like that magic eye trick.

• 13:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Where you pull something away and you never stop seeing it. And I remember being like, oh yeah, I mean, I guess this is about how relentlessly someone who wanted to come to a familiar place for escape is really dismayed by the manner in which and the volume and velocity at which they are just being sold things that they do not have any desire for. And it's a song that is deeply about alienation, about what it is to grow up in a suburb. Like honestly, that is at the core of it. And I, at the time I first heard the song, I didn't really know what a suburb was. I grew up in a neighborhood that bordered a very big suburb.

• 13:57Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  And I felt like that was like another planet. I mean, truly another planet. And I did not meet kids from the suburbs until I was a little older, playing soccer. And the way that they seemed so bewildered by what it is to grow up in a community where everyone kind of cares for everyone, where it's like this person who is disciplining me is not my mother, but in a way she has the blessing of my mother. So in this role, she's acting as a mother to me, you know?

• 14:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  This community is full of elders. This community is full of parents. This community is full of children, reaching out for anyone who will reach back towards them as someone will. It felt to me like when I met more and more people from the suburbs, they had like no understanding of an ecosystem of care that looked like that. Because so much of the ecosystem was like, oh yes, we are in this big house and I have everything I need. Therefore you never need to leave, you know?

• 14:52Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did you ever live in the suburbs?

• 14:54Speaker 02

  I lived briefly in a suburb in the northern part of Columbus. How old was I? I had to be like 19. At the time, it was hard because no one I knew lived out there. I don't even remember what brought me out there. I think it was just cheap rant, honestly.

• 15:12Hrishikesh Hirway?

  When you were living there, would you think about this song?

• 15:14Speaker 02

  All the time. To be fair, though, that was at a very Clash-heavy time for me. The Clash, London Calling, it should be said, is one of my favorite albums ever made, and The Clash is one of my favorite bands of all time. And I really think I familiarized myself. I was so deep into them in that era. I was so immersed in the punk scene, the Midwest punk scene, the hardcore scene, too, which at that point, like, a lot of the kids I was rolling with were not into The Clash because they thought it was there to mainstream, to all this stuff. And I was like, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to the same shows y'all are. I understand what's... But at the same time, I would go home and I would be so deep into their catalog, you know? And Lost in the Supermarket, for me, was massively soundtracking that very specific era of feeling for me. Because I

• 15:59Speaker 02

  lived in an apartment complex that was just monochromatic, you know, one of those ones where it's like, everything looks exactly the same. And my window did not face the street or the outside. It faced the rest of the complex. And there is something a little bit devastating, I think, about waking up in the morning, sitting up in bed, looking out the window, and seeing everything look like everything. For me, after a while, it made me think, like, there actually is no world outside of this one. That was hard for me. So, yeah, the supermarket does represent a physical, literal supermarket. Yes, the supermarket is also the monochromatic apartment complex. The supermarket is also the strip

• 16:41Speaker 02

  malls that have the same things and never change, you know?

• 16:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  My conversation with Hanif Abdurraqib continues after this.

• 16:51Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You might have heard me say that Song Exploder is part of Radiotopia from PRX. And I wanted to explain what that means and how it connects to you. PRX is a public media nonprofit, so they're focused on supporting work that serves the public interest. And they started Radiotopia as a way to empower independent podcast makers like me. Here on Song Exploder, we try to book artists from a really wide range of music and backgrounds and ideas, and we spend a long time editing together each episode. I think that's what makes the show special, but it's not a great formula if you're trying to maximize profit. But I've been able to keep this show going despite that because of the support of Radiotopia and listeners like you. Radiotopia sells ads for the show, but those

• 17:35Hrishikesh Hirway?

  come and go, and nothing is as reliable as the listeners who believe in what we're doing. So if you care about this show, and if you care about supporting independent media, please visit radiotopia.fm/donate. You can chip in any amount that works for you. It all makes a difference. Again, it's radiotopia.fm/donate. Thank you so much.

• 18:01Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Could you map for me the relationship that you had with The Clash in between hearing that album for the first time at 11 or 12 in the library, and the time that you're describing when they're a huge part of your life? Like, did they immediately become one of your favorite bands after sitting there in the library, or did it take a little while for it to percolate?

• 18:21Speaker 02

  It took one week of listening to that album in the library over and over again. And this is what I did. This is funny. I was afraid to ask, who is that band? I was afraid to seem like I didn't know something, even at 11 years old.

• 18:32Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Thankfully, I've massaged that impulse out of me. But after two days, I listened to it for two days in a row, and then it was gone. And so what I did was, I went up to someone on that third day and said, can you put the CD that was there yesterday back in it? It was in the first slot.

• 18:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And at that point, you still didn't know the name of the band?

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Didn't know the name of the band. And I think I said something like, I think it was in the first slot, but I don't remember. And they were like, oh, was it London Calling? And because I could glean the name of the song from the first, you know, I said, yeah. And they gave me the CD. Back then, they didn't have cases. They were in the little plastic. And that is how I found out who The Clash were. And so I, for the next three days, just kept asking for it.

• 19:14Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did you get to check it out and take it home, or did you have to listen to it in the library?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Well, we could have checked it out and taken it home, but we didn't have, you know, my home was not very CD-forward. This is a very funny thing. We were a cassette family for a very long time.

• 19:28Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  So I wasn't sure, you know, I thought about this when thinking about doing this episode. I was like, When did I first check out a CD from the library? But it wasn't back then. And that, to me, also made it, that is how I fell in love with the band. I fell in love with the band because I could not take the band home.

• 19:44Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Right.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  You know, I fell in love with the band because there were nights where I was thinking about them still, and I could not roll over and press play. I fell in love with the band because they existed in this like two hour window of a day that I would have to leave behind every single day and then get back again the next day. That, I think, is how affection can be born, is to say, I'm falling in love with this person, place, thing, that I don't have unlimited access to.

• 20:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Right.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  And the denial of that access is allowing me to romanticize the time that I do have with them or that place or that thing. And that is how I fell in love with The Clash, was very much like, you know, affection by refusal.

• 20:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you remember the first person you talked to about The Clash after that?

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. When I was like 11, 12, 13, you know, I was really fortunate in that the kids I was in school with, like in middle school with, were all deeply music curious, you know? Maybe not about the same stuff I was curious about, but everyone was just passing songs to everybody. And so I remember my pal Tyler. We used to sometimes do this thing at lunch where we would trade headphones. It was one of those things where it's like, I won't tell you what I'm listening to, you won't tell me what you're listening to, let's just swap headphones. And I played London Calling, the first song for him, because I thought he would. You know, I feel like that's a hard song not to at least be jarred by. You don't have to like it, but I think it's a hard song to not be like, what the hell is this?

• 21:07Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  And he was indeed like, what the hell is this? Gosh, back then, the most rewarding thing for me was to show someone something and have them love it nearly as much as I do. But I remember that specifically because The Clash felt like the first band in my life that I found entirely on my own. And of course, not on my own, I was guided there. But, but the band that like wasn't passed down to me from a sibling or a parent. It was really my own close listening that allowed me to fall in love with this band. And to offer that up to a person and say, maybe you'll like this as much as I do and feel it land like that.

• 21:42Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  I was 12 years old and it was, I remember. Distinctly, it was during Ramadan. You know, Muslims, I was raised Muslim, so I do Ramadan. And when I was, the reason I remember this distinctly is because when I was in school, elementary, middle school, during Ramadan, teachers, so that I wouldn't go to the lunchroom and like see everyone eating.

• 22:01Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Teachers would let me stay in the classroom and play Oregon Trail. So, which is like a pretty sweet deal, I guess.

• 22:07Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, it's not bad.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  And Tyler was one of my earliest and best friends, and I knew he would be a good friend because he would stay behind with me.

• 22:14Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Oh, wow.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  You know, this dude who like could eat his lunch whenever, would ask to go to the bathroom right before lunch and then sneak eat his lunch very fast in the bathroom and then stay with me during the actual lunch.

• 22:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  That's such a sweet friend.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, truly the best, the best type of friend. Like, I just imagine him like eating a sandwich really fast in the bathroom stall. But that is, you know, it was during Ramadan because we were playing Oregon Trail, switching headphones and, and I thought he was just being nice, you know? But the next day, he was like, can I listen to that again?

• 22:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  It's interesting that you switched headphones without introduction or anything. In a way, you were kind of recreating for him the experience that you'd had.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 22:53Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you seek out that kind of experience still? You know, where you can discover music with no introduction or context?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  All the time. I mean, I, I listen to so much new music every year. So, for example, I mean, I make a master, massive list of my top albums at the end of every year, that sometimes years into the 100, you know, I think last year was like 118 and I, I do math, I have spreadsheets. Last year I listened to, you know, like 800 something hours of new music.

• 23:20Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  You know?

• 23:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  At least 15% of that is stuff I don't know anything about. So much of my process is, huh, this band I don't know anything about, but I like the look of this album. There's something about this band name or this aesthetic, or I heard one note of this band elsewhere. That is to play, that's the type of shit I'm into. I'm like, I would like to be in awe of something that I did not know existed when I woke up that morning.

• 23:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I have to say, I was a little bit surprised. Maybe I took it wrong, but there was a note in your voice when you said, "Back then, you loved getting someone to fall in love with something that you were in love with."

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:02Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And you said it in a way that was almost like, "This used to be a big thing in my life, but maybe not so much anymore."

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:09Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And I was surprised by it because to me, I think of you as a great ambassador of music.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  In a way that where I would assume that that is a primary motive for so much of what you do is to specifically have that feeling of getting other people to fall in love with the thing that you're in love with.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  It is, and I do, I'm still very excited about it, but the difference is I don't, I don't hear about it as much. There's ways I do it in a very real, material way when I was younger. I could say, "Take these headphones and hear this," or "I made you this mixtape," or "I made you this playlist," or "I made you this, I made you this, I made you this." And I could see that kind of individualized reaction to the end result.

• 24:44Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Now, for example, every week I make a playlist called Songs I Love This Week that are just songs straight up that I love this week.

• 24:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yes.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  And I make that largely for me, like to keep track of what I'm listening to and to keep track of what excited me. And I do hear people say, "Oh, man, I'm into this band now because I saw it on your playlist." And so there's a frequency with which that happens, and that's delightful. But I kind of don't get to see it in real time. And I think that's maybe the thing that excites me is being witness to someone falling in love with something for the first time.

• 25:13Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  But there's something about like, gosh, I wish I were there when you heard the specific part of that song that made you love that band forever.

• 25:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Slater Kinney is one of my favorite bands of all time, right? Like, the first Slater Kinney song I heard was called "The Doctor," ever. The first song I ever heard was called "The Doctor," I was 12 years old or something. And I was like, "I'm not into this." So, you know, the first three acts of that song, I was like, "I am not into the, you know, Corin Tucker's voice." I was like, "This isn't working for me." But then that thing happens at the end of that song where it just kind of explodes and Corin and Carrie doing that kind of tug of war. And I remember being like, "Oh, wait a minute. I love this band." You know, like, "I'm gonna listen to everything this band does from now on." And that's, that's the moment, you know? Those are the moments I want to be present for, I think.

• 25:54Hrishikesh Hirway?

  To go back to London Calling for a second and the track listing, in my memory, Lost in the Supermarket is, when it appears, it's the gentlest song so far on the album.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Extremely, yeah.

• 26:05Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How did that affect you? You know, hearing something less abrasive than everything that had come before, did it feel like, like a surprise to you? What was your feeling about the shift in sound?

• 26:17Speaker 02

  I was delighted by it, but also, I mean, like, yes, it is the prep softer song, but London Calling by track eight traverses so many genres. Like Rudy Can't Fail is, you know, like a ska, like a dub song. And I remember getting to like Rudy Can't Fail after branded Cadillac and Jimmy Jazz and thinking that the CD changer switched. Where it was like, okay, I think this is the same band, but it feels like a different album.

• 26:43Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  You know? So by the time I got to Lost in the Supermarket, I probably thought this was some kind of compilation. Every single song sounded different. And, and I remember being like, oh, this is like an R and B song. And that ignited me in a real, a real way, because that is the genre that they were dabbling in, that I was most familiar with. And it felt like a kind of comforting call.

• 27:05Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This might be an impossible question to answer, but do you think that you would have responded as strongly to the song if it didn't have the word supermarket in it?

• 27:13Speaker 02

  No, the word supermarket sets up everything else. Again, like, obviously, I was not thinking this in depth about it structurally at age 11. But you hear the word supermarket and as the song goes on, you are to understand that the supermarket is a reflection of a broader societal issue. And you get to the end where it's like Jones, a drummer, doing that kind of vocal layering thing where atop you just keep hearing the repetition of, I'm all lost, I'm all lost, I'm all lost. And so lost is really the anchoring word. But for me, as an 11 year old, you need a touchable word, you know? Like you need a word that makes you feel familiar. And supermarket was absolutely that word. There were things that there were thematically being traversed on that album

• 27:58Speaker 02

  that I didn't really understand. Like Spanish Bombs is about like the Spanish Civil War. London Calling has this heavy political leaning that I didn't understand. And Lost in the Supermarket was the one where I was like, oh, wait a minute. I at least understand the container in which this song is operating inside of.

• 28:16Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, fully understanding that like you weren't thinking about the commentary on capitalism and monoculture or whatever, just at a purely internal emotional reaction. What feelings did it evoke for you?

• 28:30Speaker 02

  You know, these two things are perhaps at odds, but both calm and claustrophobia. You know, for me at first, I was like, oh, yes, this is relatable and it, you know, I feel both small and large when walking through the supermarket on my own. I feel like it's all mine and this is holding in on that. But as the song goes on, I think sonically, it begins to feel like the walls are closing in. So it is like, imagine oneself walking down a very wide aisle in which you have room to bounce and spin around and throw things in a cart. And then the aisles begin to move and begin to shift and close in and close in. And you realize you're being overwhelmed by, yes, a few things you want, but much of what you do not want.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  And I think even at 11, it made me feel a little claustrophobic. Not so claustrophobic that it was like scary, but a kind of claustrophobia that made me understand it wasn't all quaint and joyful.

• 29:28Hrishikesh Hirway?

  One of the things that was so exciting for me, I think, when I was falling in love with music for the first time, was the understanding that like a particular song could make me feel more than one feeling at once.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:38Hrishikesh Hirway?

  That I was like, oh, that's a thing that music can do. I can't separate these feelings and I also can't articulate all of them, but I can pinpoint that there are different shades all colliding at the same time.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I feel like, you know, I didn't really allow myself that. Like, I think when I was young, I didn't, I didn't always allow myself that until that song. Perhaps I didn't have proper language for it, but this song makes me feel free and invincible and also deeply uncomfortable.

• 30:06Hrishikesh Hirway?

  As somebody who writes beautifully about music and about artists and bands, was your love for The Clash, as you got deeper into your love for them, did it extend to like, reading, writing about The Clash in a way that influenced your feelings about writing about music?

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. One of my favorite pieces of music writing in history is the Lester Bangs profile on The Clash. He loved this band, you know, like, he pursued this band out of his own interest in them, his own kind of eagerness in them. They weren't the biggest band in the world at that point, when he went to go chase them down, you know, they were still kind of ascending. It was December 1977, I think, when he did that piece, and he approached them with real curiosity and care and a deep critical eye. I mean, he was critical of them in that piece as well.

• 30:54Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  And I found that to be enthralling. And I read that piece when I was 15, I think. And I thought, okay, a band can manifest one thing in their music and have politics that live outside that music that are maybe not entirely at odds with the music, but are sometimes fighting against the ideological purities required by the scene they exist in. That Lester Bangs piece was fascinating because it was someone who was so excited about a band and so curious about them and so eager to learn about them, getting on a plane, crossing a body of water to see them, and then realizing that they are human too. You could see him on the page, coming to terms with the fact that these were just

• 31:38Speaker 02

  real people who happened to make something he loved. And because of that, he could approach them with a critical, a generous eye, but a critical eye. To me, that's the entire ethos of my critical approach is that if I love something enough to run to the page, I love it enough to be not only vibrant and fluorescent in my approach to analysis. I require the kind of rigor that sometimes asks me to prioritize humanness, my own and the very real humanness of those who I set my gaze upon.

• 32:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Honey, thank you so much.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me. It's always so good to get to talk to you. Truly, it's always a pleasure.

• 32:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You can learn more about Hanif's work and find links to his books, essays, and more on his website, abdurraqib.com. His most recent book is the critically acclaimed bestseller, There's Always This Year, on basketball and ascension. And go to songexploder.net/keychange for more, including a playlist with "Lost in the Supermarket" and the other songs that Hanif mentioned in our conversation. We'll be back with a Song Exploder episode next week. Stay tuned for more Key Change episodes in the future. This episode was produced by me and Mary Dolan, with editing help from Craig Ely and production assistance from Tiger Biscuit. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more

• 33:05Hrishikesh Hirway?

  about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, you can sign up for my newsletter. You can find a link to it on the Song Exploder website. You can also follow me on Instagram, and you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Keshi-Hirway. Thanks for listening.

• 33:27Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Radiotopia.

• 33:30Hrishikesh Hirway?

  From PRX.