January 24: Who's Yellen Now?

I love everything about this story. Here goes:

When Joe Biden nominated Janet Yellen for secretary of the treasury, he joked that Lin-Manuel Miranda should write a musical about her. "We might have to ask Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the musical about the first secretary of the treasury, ‘Hamilton,’ to write another musical for the first woman secretary of the treasury — Yellen,” he said. I still can't believe Biden said this and I love it so much. 

Inspired by (or maybe challenged by) Biden, Kai Ryssdal of NPR's “Marketplace” asked Dessa (one of the artists who contributed to “The Hamilton Mixtape”) to write a song about Janet Yellen. I already love Kai Ryssdal and almost religiously listen to Marketplace every weekday at 6pm where he explains the economy in easy-to-understand, down-to-earth ways (Kai himself describes the Marketplace persona as "irreverence, wit, accessibility, humor, and when needed, a bit of edginess that makes these stories we do listenable."

But I love him even more now for not only picking up on that "request" by Biden but also by following through by asking Dessa to deliver.  And she did. And it is absolutely delightful. I love when rap and hip hop is smart and clever and this song does not disappoint. Dessa has a great command of language and uses her words wonderfully. She says she did a bunch of research about Janet Yellen to prepare for writing the song and enjoyed getting to know more about her. She said, "It was really exciting to become a fan of Janet Yellen." I love that, too. 

The title of the song (and the chorus hook) is "Who's Yellen Now?", which is itself super clever. 

Here are some of my favorite lines:

"...But here comes Yellen with that inside voice
Never mind the mild manner, policies make noise
She's five foot nothing, but hand to god
She can pop a collar, she can rock a power bob."

"Damn, Janet, go and get it
Fifth in line for president!"

"It only took a couple centuries
The first female secretary of the treasury."

It's just as clever, spunky, and rhythmic as songs in Hamilton. I. Love. It. 💕

One my favorites parts of writing these blogs is going on crazy google searches and wikipedia spirals to learn random facts. Some delightful things I learned while googling things for this entry:

In 1997, Ryssdal  (who also served in the navy for 8 years) and his wife left their postings with US Foreign Services in Beijing so she could attend business school at Stanford. He took a job at Borders making $7 a hour. And while he was shelving books one evening — and "wondering what he was going to do with his life" — that he came across a book listing radio internships. And the rest, as they say, is history. When Ryssal was asked what advice he would give to anyone wanted to follow in his footsteps, he said "You have to do whatever makes you happy. You can’t replicate what I did because I got unbelievably lucky. I was in the right place at the right time and willing to make a change and take some risks." It was actually fairly comforting (and delightful) to hear that someone like Kai also spent a time in his life wondering what he was going to do with life. And look where he is now!

With delight,

♥Jamie

PS: I also want to make a brief comment about Dessa. I had only ever heard her one song on the Hamilton Mixtape before hearing her new Yellen song. Based on her voice, I assumed she was a Black woman. But upon googling her, I discovered she is white. I was taken aback, and upset with myself that I had made this incorrect assumption. Just because she was rapping doesn't mean she had to be a Black woman. I am sorry I made this assumption, and pledge to be better about things like this.