Watch out, Hamilton. Janet Yellen’s coming for your hip-hop cred
Janet Yellen Photo by Getty/CHANDAN KHANNA / Contributor
By PJ Grisar January 27, 2021
Newly-minted Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is already a less problematic fave than Alexander Hamilton, an adulterer, elitist social climber and — despite Lin-Manuel Miranda’s protestations — a possible slave owner. But does a song about her slap? We now know: Yes.
About a week ago, Marketplace, inspired by an off-handed remark from Joe Biden, asked Dessa of the hip-hop collective Doomtree to consider what a track about Yellen’s trajectory from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to 1500 Penn might sound like. She delivered and then some with “Who’s Yellen Now?” — a new jack swing-style paean to the “5-foot nothing” former Federal Reserve chair who can “rock a power bob.”
Where Miranda emphasized Hamilton’s overstated braggadocio, Dessa pushes Yellen’s mild-mannered approach to policy and her experience leading the Council of Economic Advisers, the Treasury and the Fed to the forefront over some electronic drum hits and disco strings. “She knows the kinda stimulus it takes to pass a buck,” Dessa sings, “I heard she called the housing crisis/She’s qualified as ffff —/It only took a couple centuries/The first female secretary of the treasury.”
The song highlights Yellen’s fiscal philosophy and doesn’t spare a dig at her predecessor Steve Mnuchin, referred to as “the Lego guy” for that time he may have violated ethics laws by plugging the “Lego Batman” movie — a film his company financed along with such other cinematic gems as “Get Hard.”
How does it stack up to “Hamilton?” Well, it’s certainly a quicker introduction and a lot easier to dance to. (Though Dessa did credit her work on the “Hamilton Mixtape” for some of the sound.)
While falling short of Miranda’s lyrical virtuosity, the song still has some clever turns of phrase. And, crucially, it has something “Hamilton,” for all its talk of raising glasses to freedom, lacks — a signature beverage.
“Lift up your mojitos,” Dessa sings, “‘Cause she manages the Mint.”
PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture reporter. He can be reached at Grisar@Forward.com.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
