Pubdate: Thu, 01 Oct 2015
Source: StarPhoenix, The (CN SN)
Copyright: 2015 The StarPhoenix
Contact: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/400
Author: Tristin Hopper
Page: C11
Referenced: http://mapinc.org/url/zJIKIqpZ

'STONERS FOR JUSTIN' URGE GRIT VOTE

Another ode in melodic election

In this daily feature until Election Day, the National Post captures a
telling moment in time from the 2015 campaign trail.

Two teens in baggy, vintage "Canada" sweaters stroll through the
nighttime streets of Montreal's Hochelaga neighbourhood.

"Stoners of the world, vote for Justin Trudeau," says rapper y.not
against a solid hip-hop beat flecked with sampled quotes from Justin
and Pierre Trudeau.

So goes the music video for Stoners for Justin, the latest song to hit
a 2015 campaign that has turned out to be surprisingly musical.

The song is the creation of Yung Liberalz, a newly formed group
comprising Quebec rappers y.not and x.shulz.

"Call me MSNBC, I got a Liberal bias," says y.not at video's end,
while x.shulz can be seen at a Liberal rally, scoring a high-five from
Justin Trudeau himself.

With lines like "your wife is hot, like my vaporizer," it's a bit too
cheeky to be an outright Liberal endorsement. And unlike other hip-hop
videos about smoking weed, this video conspicuously doesn't feature a
single joint or dime bag.

It almost looks like a Conservative hoax. And indeed, that's what Yung
Liberalz suspected people would think.

"It was kind of an experiment =C2=85 we thought it would be funny if the
Conservatives started sharing it and saying 'oh, look at this, the
potheads are on board with Justin Trudeau'," said x.shulz, reached by
phone from Montreal.

He asked the National Post not to use his real name, but x.shulz is a
17-year-old high school student. On Tuesday, in fact, he was late for
another interview after being held at school for detention.

Despite its name, Yung Liberalz is non-partisan, and the song is
firmly in the realm of satire.

But despite the fact that Stoners for Justin is "trolling" the Liberal
leader, in x.shulz's words, he says it's been met with uniform Liberal
praise.

"The communications guy for the actual Young Liberals wrote to us and
said 'everybody in Ottawa liked it, I listened to it 25 times'," he
said, adding that Liberal sources even approached the band to cut
additional pro-Trudeau tracks.

The Liberal Party denied that any such contact was
made.

The concept for Stoners for Justin was prompted by the simple
observation that while Justin Trudeau talked a big game about
marijuana legalization prior to the election, the Liberals have kept
very quiet about pot since the writ was dropped.

"We thought that was funny, so we decided to roll with it," he
said.

While the 2015 campaign has mercifully not seen any piano playing from
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, it has been a remarkably melodic
election.

Early on there was "Harperman," an anti-Conservative folksong by
Ottawa bureaucrat Tony Turner.

Conservative cabinet minister Maxime Bernier kicked off his
re-election campaign with an old-timey radio jingle.

"He's a guy like us! A guy that knows us," says the anthem's peppy
coed singers.

And, of course, Blue Rodeo emerged this week with Stealin' All My
Dreams, an ode itemizing Tory legislative outrages.

As observers have noted, as compared to the United States, Canadian
government are rarely the target of protest anthems.

Canadians do write political protest songs, to be sure, but they're
usually directed at foreign leaders.

Neil Young wrote Ohio to blame the government of Richard Nixon for
National Guard shootings at Kent State University. The Guess Who were
similarly targeting U.S. "war machines" and "ghetto scenes" with
American Woman.

Bruce Cockburn's If I Had a Rocket Launcher, meanwhile, was about
shooting down the military helicopters of Guatemalan dictator Jose
Rios Montt.
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MAP posted-by: Matt