When discussing racial representation at the Oscars, Asians and Asian Americans were given little lip service.
Dumbfoundead is clearly tired of the silence, as he lets out his frustrations on this new track, “safe”.
Before diving more into the topic of the song, I want to throw some props to Dumb for stepping up his game in terms of song structure. Mostly quiet for the past few years, Dumbfoundead has been lab coat-fly, test tube-strapped, experimenting with his sound. The few loosies that’ve made it out during this brief hibernation, showed a crazy variety in the flow and production departments. Dumb’s also been mixing in more Korean evidenced in tracks like “Mijangwon” and confirmed at the TriBeCa Film Festival Bad Rap Premier that he would be dropping a full record in Korean this summer.
As for this song’s content, Dumbfounded does a good job of poignantly calling out the film industry for overlooking Asians when it comes to serious roles, instead typecasting them as comedic relief. The title and hook hinge on the idea that this kind of discrimination is rampant because Dumb, and other Asians are seen as safe and incapable of rocking the boat. According to Dumbfoundead, that’s their first and biggest mistake.
Check out the track and creative video below:
art by your homey Arthur Banach
check out more on the gram @wildhxir
