Conor Oberst, Chuck D record separate but equally well-intentioned anti-Arizona songs

In the midst of today's racially charged culture war—with Ray Stevens on one side and people who make decent music on the other—over Arizona's controversial, don't-call-it-profiling SB 1070, rapper Chuck D and indie-folker Conor Oberst are making a little ebony and ivory. Just not on the same keyboard. Says Pitchfork, D has released "Tear Down That Wall," a song blasting SB 1070's blatantly anti-immigrant stance. Pitchfork also reports that Conor Oberst, recently of the supergroup Monsters Of Folk, is recording an anti-Arizona song of his own as part of the Zack De La Rocha-organized Sound Strike boycott effort. When the song comes out, presumably soon, it will be under Oberst's Bright Eyes flag. D previously established his antipathy toward the state's racist policy-making with Public Enemy's incendiary 1991 classic, "By The Time I Get To Arizona"; Oberst's defunct side-project Desaparecidos once released an album called Read Music/Speak Spanish.