John Legend and The Roots have a new album out, and one of my favorite songs is “Compared To What.” I played it for some musician friends of mine, and one of them said, “Wow, this is a lot slower than the original!”

There ensued some discussion of “the original.” One person said Common (the hip hop artist); someone else said, “I thought it was from The Seventies.” After a visit to The Google, I found a wealth of information about this interesting, important song of protest, and its circuitous pop history.

Mark Anthony Neal, a music writer and professor at Duke University, gives the best breakdown of the song’s history in a March, 2003 article for Pop Matters. He notes that, indeed, Common did record a version of “Compared to What,” with the singer Mya. But the only lyrics from the original song that remain are, “Tryin’ to make it real, compared to what?” Everything else is a rap by Common that includes lines like “the real can’t be bought or sold.”

The irony (which you knew was coming)? The rapper was remaking Eugene McDaniels’s 1960’s-era anti-war song as part of a Coca-Cola marketing campaign called “Coca-Cola…Real:”

The original version of the song is a powerful example of black pop that wasn’t afraid, echoing Audre Lorde, to speak truth to power, an element sorely missing in contemporary black pop music.

Many of the so-called hip-hop generation’s artists have been remarkably silent, while Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell march lockstep to war with Iraq. Thus it is terribly ironic that in the midst of major antiwar protests around the world, one of the most “conscious” of hip-hop artists [Common] referenced one of the great protest recordings in the pantheon of soul music to sell brown caffeinated fizz.

[flvplayer http://www.noiselabs.com/blog/audio/mya_common_comparedToWhat.flv 400 320]

That remake of the song is particularly distasteful when you compare it to the most famous of the 60’s-era versions. You Tube user Dr. Greez had uploaded the classic recording of pianist Les McCann and saxophonist Eddie Harris doing “Compared to What” live at the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival:

That version really cooks.

It’s interesting to hear John Legend and The Roots, who share enough of an affinity with Common that he appears elsewhere on the same album (Wake Up!), offer their take on this anti-war song. Unlike Common in the Coca-Cola ads, John Legend sings the original lyrics more or less as written. The Roots provides a much more stripped-down, slower base for the song. Overall, it’s a stirring version.

As we’re in the midst of two “overseas contingency operations” that continue to kill and maim on a daily basis, the potent protest lyrics of “Compared To What?” remain sadly relevant. John Legend, ?uestlove, and the Roots have taken a small step toward restoring the honor, and the power, of Eugene McDaniels’s original.

Have a listen below.

[audio:http://www.noiselabs.com/blog/audio/roots_what.mp3|titles=Compared to What|artists=John Legend and The Roots]