This Friday, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) dropped his hip-hop masterpiece B E R N  D O W N  A M E R I C A, to the acclaim of critics and fans alike. The album’s release came as a surprise to admirers of the senator’s political career, as the first indication Sanders of the album came with a cryptic tweet the day before the album’s release date, reading: “PLAYA, WE GON’ BERN DOWN THE CHARTS LIKE WE BERN DOWN THE DNC. #blessup #berndownamerica.”

Despite its unexpected release and initial skepticism from fans, listeners universally agree that B E R N  D O W N  A M E R I C A, abbreviated “BDA,” took on East coast hip-hop past legends such Biggie Smalls, Nas, and Jay Z, changing the genre irreversibly.

The album begins with the instant classic “Grocery List,” an in-depth exploration of the social and economic problems facing the American underclass, examined through the bowel movements of the daily actions of a 75-year-old Vermont senator named “Barney Blanders” — a clever hint to the track’s autobiographical origins most would miss.

In describing Senator Blanders’ remarkably regular and timely defecation schedule, Sanders constructs an elaborate metaphor for the mindless, scheduled drudgery of capitalist wage labor. He compares the Sen. Blanders’ bowel system, which take “pure, tasty prunes,” and turns them into “nasty brown poomie-juice,” to the metaphorical bowel system of a salaried job, which takes the pure efforts of human creativity, and turns them into a more literal excrement.

“As soon as I heard the song, I went out to go buy extra-strength laxatives so I could pretend to be my idol Barney Blanders. Sure, the seven metric litres of liquid stool I passed is painful, but the song is that good,” NC senior Alia Mahmood said.

Next up, Sanders presents perhaps the most narratively complex track on the album: “Milk,” “Celery,” and “Ricotta Cheese.” Sanders received criticism for this profanity-laden track, which consists of an unscripted nine-minute drunken rant against Sanders’s DNC opponent Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill. “Milk”contains only one couplet: rhyming “duck-bread” (referring to the handouts Sec. Clinton’s supporters gave her) with a phrase seven lines later unsuitable for younger listeners, used to refer to Bill Clinton.

Sanders shifts to a vivid stream of consciousness, flowing from the question at the end of Adult Diapers — “Is this microphone still on? That [censored] probably controls the au-.” — creating a portrait of a man beaten, but not defeated.

In the next track, “Eggs,” Sanders offers us a stunning commentary on the nature of political truth, delivered through a series of first-person anecdotes. Some of the fluid style still remains, as Sanders moves further and further away from a traditional rhyme scheme as the song progresses, but “Eggs” also hearkens back to earlier tracks on the album with a more traditional structure and beat.

Sanders’ anecdotes throughout the song at first sound incredibly real, describing everyday occurrences in excruciating detail. The seeming departure from the metaphorical nature of earlier songs, despite retaining a similar rhythm and syllable scheme, initially puzzles listeners. However, the initial puzzlement soon gives way to its own undoing, as listeners realize that, in truth, the listener possesses no recourse to verify if any of the events discussed happened at all.

When Sanders raps “went to subway / got tomatoes on a ham and cheese sandwich / the tomatoes tasted awful! / does subway still even use real tomatoes? / I need to find out!”, he not only subverts a traditional hip-hop rhyme scheme (another aspect of the song which casts doubt to its truth), he asks us to question our very conception of truth. When Sanders asks if “subway still [uses] real tomatoes”, he asks us if his anecdote about subway (represented by the sandwich) can still verify (“use”) our inbuilt conceptions of philosophical truth.

After the incredible philosophical investigation of “Eggs,” viewers see the much more subdued final track of the album: “Remember honey, adult diapers” (RHAD).

Where “Eggs” destroyed our inner structures, RHAD rebuilds them, Sanders, on this last track, delivers a stunning reversal of his previous epistemological uncertainty, confirming the necessity of truth in a brilliant display of wordsmithery.  

With “she,” in the verse “I love my wife / she’s so beautiful / although I had a fling on the campaign trail / she was also beautiful / the democratic party will be beautiful / under a single-payer healthcare plan” Sanders refers to both his physical wife and mistress — playing on the “tree-o” of “guns, money, and birches”—but also to the concept of truth itself.

This revelation casts a new light on the entire album. In the style of Common’s “I used to love H.E.R.,” Sanders’ revelation at the end of the album — that “healthcare” stands in for the larger concept of — makes listeners go back and review the album with a new ear. This entire album can stand, after this twist, as one long commentary on the nature of truth: the truth of labor, the truth of metaphor, and the truth of truth itself.

The Chant’s grade: Sanders 20/20

April Fool’s, you fool!

XOXO, The Chant