From the Sept. 4 edition of Street Roots.
The song is infectious. A bouncing celebration of drum-n-strum bliss — and love, the cuddly kind, love between a boy and a girl, shakin’ it on the dance floor.
Michael Franti and Spearhead’s hit song “Say Hey,” isn’t angry; it’s not seething with the venom of a disenfranchised generation. It isn’t about seizing the day and thwarting regret — well, actually, it is — but the other stuff, Franti’s bread and butter, has never made it this far, this fast. Franti has carved a career out of politically charged lyrics and emotionally powerful works that both scold and embrace, if not entrance, the listener, because his activism — on issues of homelessness, war, and climate change — is inseparable from his music, giving him a cult following among throngs in both the hip hop and social justice movements that has never been jeopardized by commercial or corporate interests.
Until now. “Say Hey” is big, getting bigger. Mainstream big, unlike anything he’s done before.
But then, just as the song cracked Billboard’s top 40, perhaps out of rebellion or in an effort to put the man’s feet back on the ground, Franti’s appendix exploded. Continue reading