Album of the Year contender Everything’s Fine from Jean Grae & Quelle Chris is back in the spotlight today with a new video directed and animated by Crankbunny for the track My Contribution To This Scam.
“Hi I got my selfie stick cause I do it for the Gram. The Flat Tummy Tea cause I do it for the brands. I make a rap album because anybody can.”
The standout track leads the record off and sets the tone for the highbrow discourse to come. Both Jean & Quelle reflect with deadpan astuteness on the rap circus and the characters currently filling the big top.
The vinyl for Everything’s Fine is back in stores and Mello Music Group will be shipping from MMG store starting 9/21! This is the Amaranth & Mint Edition limited to 500 copies.
When you hear the phrase, “everything’s fine,” we immediately understand it as emotional shorthand. In daily life, we depend on those perfunctory clichés (hope all is well, good to hear from you, etc.) to spare ourselves from the psychological unpacking that the truth requires. For that, there’s art. For that, there’s Everything’s Fine from Jean Grae and Quelle Chris, a jagged, acerbic odyssey that brilliantly riffs on this dystopian zeitgeist.
The thing is, anyone without a lobotomy and a toxic red hat understands that things are definitely not fine. The crush of modern anxiety, the late capitalist scramble to survive, and the brain warp rot of social media has left most of us half crazy.
“We have a dickhead for a president, and before our eyes, racial, religious, and sexual identity rights are moving backwards,” says New York’s (by way of Detroit) Quelle Chris. “Money is still a thing (I’m waiting for Star Trek life to start). There’s war, your kids may be sick, but if someone randomly asks “how’s it going?” most people will say “fine.”
“They might be the most lit comedic duo since Cheech & Chong. And when tasked with offering an escape from reality or confronting it head-on, they inevitably chose both.” -NPR