Michigan Boat Boy, La Bestia, and My Year of Meats

Apr 24, 2021

Welcome to the forty-fifth installation of The Q : your one-stop weekly newsletter of culture recommendations.

Album

Michigan Boat Boy by Lil Yachty

Appropriation and hip-hop often go hand-in-hand. Ever since the days of Vanilla Ice, there has always been debate over what counts as appropriation. This has often crossed the lines of race, region, and affiliation. On Lil Yachty’s newest project, he flips the standard that we have for artists and perfectly demonstrates the difference between appropriation and homage. On Michigan Boat Boy, Yachty acknowledges that he’s borrowing Detroit’s sound and makes an album in homage to the city with one of the most exciting rap scenes in the world.

La Bestia directed by Ram Tamez, Marlijin Van Nuenen and Alfredo Gerard Kuttikatt

In just under eight minutes, Ram Tamez, Marlijin Van Nuenen and Alfredo Gerard Kuttikatt’s animated short La Bestia breaks hearts, as the film centers a Mexican girl and a young smuggler at the heart of a dangerous journey on top of a cargo train. I stumbled upon this project after I saw one of my favorite film critics, Carlos Aguilar, tweet that the film recently won Best Student film at the 48th Annie Awards, as the thesis project of students at the infamous French school of Gobelins, l’Ecole de l’image.

My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki

In Ruth L. Ozeki’s My Year of Meats, the reader is drawn in by complex characters who undergo experiences such as world travel, escaping a country, and even being battered by cow carcasses in a slaughterhouse. While devouring the book, I found it difficult to connect each intricately detailed theme. In hindsight, I have tried to map everything together, and found that not only is Ozeki an incredible writer for her portrayal of the complicated connections between race, nationality, gender, sexuality, meat eating, and more, but she is brilliant for condensing them into one beautifully written, gorgeously crafted three hundred and sixty-one page novel.