The Break – Thirst for Exposing Privacy

We continue the topic of thirst in this episode as KC, Chris, Tash, Toria, Wood, Chris #2 and Sean discuss the love for money overshadowing the detriment of one’s actions, the impact of the Jay-Z/Solange elevator argument, and publicizing private lives.

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The Break: Jay-Z & Harry Belafonte (PODCAST)

Listen in as KC and the podcast fam lose it in the case of Jay-Z’s verse in response to Harry Belafonte’s questioning of the Jiggaman’s social activism. Podcast guests include Chris Lehman, Toria Williams, Arian White, and Mikki Bey! This episode was guest hosted by the one and only MERC80! Enjoy!

Podcast sponsor: Mikki Bey Eyelash Extensions www.mblashes.com

 

The Fall of Black Music – Part 3

The current state of black music is dismal. That is not an exaggeration. In fact, the current state of American music, by and large, is pretty bad as well. In the past, American popular music and certainly black American music has always been a force for social progress; a continuous and melodic illustration of our truest values and our deepest yearnings. Never before has our music, or America’s music generally, held back social progress. Never before has our music, to any significant degree, served as a vehicle for the celebration of the worst instincts and realities of black America and the black experience. This is a reality of, roughly, the last twenty years in particular. Our great gift to America has become a cancer within ourselves. This needs to change.

The front cover of this April’s edition of The Atlantic Magazine features an article with the headline reading American Mozart: The Genius of Kanye West. I have to admit, seeing this gave me a somewhat depressed feeling. It’s not that Kanye West’s music is, in my opinion, at the heart of our ethnic and national cultural problem (though some of it is). I’ve liked some of his stuff in the past, particularly his earlier things with Twister; Through the Wire (which was uplifting, and like-ably silly) and so forth. But a great deal of it is emblematic of the vacuousness and the mediocrity of our musical culture, if not something quite a bit worse. Take for example one of Kanye West’s breakout hits from way back in 2004, a song called Diamonds from Sierra Leone…

Diamonds from Sierra Leone is sort of a cool song to listen to, minus the fact that, if you chance to pay attention to the lyrics, it has nothing to do with the diamond mines of Sierra Leone. Nothing, no reference to it at all in the original. If you think about it, that alone is astonishing. The imagery of the music video does deal directly with that however, and the video is (again excepting the actual lyrics of the song) poignant because of it. But it’s reflective of the moral confusion of our times that an artist would borrow the name of a subject of such wrenching human tragedy only to use it as the entrance to a song that is in reality both irrelevant to the subject for which it is named, and a self-troubled glorification of the artist himself. In the latter sense then, and it’s coldly ironic, there is some relevance to the matter of the diamond mines of Sierra Leone that Kanye West did not intend. The music video begins with a quote from Mr. West, saying “Little is known of Sierra Leone, and how it connects to the diamonds we own.” Cliche sounding, but very sad, and very true. The song, as noted, then proceeds to do nothing to remedy that sadness, but rather launches into a collage of vanities that I don’t have time to go through here. But in the video a short bit of narration plays before the song, presumably from the voice of one of the slaves from the mines, testifying to the fact that they are forced to slave day in and day out for the icy stone “under the eye of watchful soldiers.” He tells us as we stare at the shirtless figure of a Leonean Rebel as he berates us through the camera, making us, for a moment, the slaves of the mines, that they slaves were forced to kill their own families for the diamonds. Then comes the chilling high-point of the tension, the moment when you see the face of a slave child, and you’re horrified to see the pupils of his eyes wide as saucers because he’s toiled in the mines for so long that his eyes are starved for sunlight. The boys eyes have become something that looks as alien as it does human because that is how his eyes have had to adjust to the unending darkness of the mines.

 

 

The tragedy is real, but the poignancy of it is manipulated in the context of the video into a perverse glorification of Kanye West himself. Explicitly, as the video displays him as some kind of hero of the Leonean slaves, but implicitly just by the odd juxtaposition of this type of imagery to the self-indulgent lyrics of the song, (“You know you can call, you gotta best believe it, the Roc stand tall and you would never believe it”). But though the video shows white westerners obliviously wearing and sharing these ill gotten jewels (and then horrified when the blood from the “blood” diamonds crawls upon their skin before the witness of slave children) so uncaring or unaware are they of the human price of their privilege and their luxury, the truth is that the self-absorption exemplified in Kanye’s lyrics is wholly reflective of the mindset that makes such moral detachment possible. Yes the video at it’s end makes a token request of us to buy non-conflict diamonds, and yes Kanye did make a remix that made an effort at dealing with the substance of this issue directly (an effort that fails entirely at being serious or profound. Jay-Z is on the remix, and his entire verse which comprises half the song is again about “The Roc” and irrelevant to the blood diamonds and the slave children of Sierra Leone. Lupe Fiasco, to his credit at least, made a much more conscientious attempt at dealing with this issue in his song “Conflict Diamonds,” inspired by the Kanye tracks). But while the video shows the children of the mines pulling Kanye from the ground as he leaps out of his European sports car, sending it crashing through what I presume was a Jewelers shop. Though the children run to him and hail him as he play pianos in a cathedral before stone figures of Christ and the angels of God, spitting his irrelevant flows as if they were either poignant or profound, Kanye West (whether he realizes it or not) exploits these children and this travesty more insidiously than the people he portrays. Most people buy and wear these diamonds out of ignorance, reveling in the stones themselves, but Kanye revels in the blood diamonds ability to make him look like something he is not: that is a man using music to fight for a higher cause, as opposed to a man using the suffering of others to glorify himself.

Why make this article about Kanye West? To put a microscope on our cultural problem, one general to America and particular to black America. I agree with President Obama that West is (or frequently can be) a “Jack Ass,” but I also agree with him that West is talented, if not to the extent that he seems to suggest (see the Atlantic article). Kanye West is not a composer. He is not a musician, at least not one of any consequence (neither of course are Jay-Z and P-Diddy). I’m not being insulting, those are just facts. He is a producer; one who cleverly takes music by talented musicians and composers of the past, dissects them, and simply applies his oft vain and otherwise meaningless lyrics to them, albeit to great effect as far as his many fans are concerned. But he’s no Bob Dylan, using art to poignantly decry the injustices of our times. He’s no Mozart of any kind. Duke Ellington was an American Mozart, a composer and musician par excellence like Mozart himself. Neither has anything in common with Kanye West. But you don’t have to be a Mozart to make meaningful music, and you don’t even have to be a great musician. Kanye West’s biggest failing, particular with Diamonds from Sierra Leone (as I said before he has made better songs lyrically at other times) is the failing of our modern music generally and that is the fact that it’s orientation begins and ends with glorification of egoism, of materialism, of image and of the self. The thing that makes Kanye West’s Diamonds from Sierra Leone so galling is the fact that it takes an issue that would call upon us to reject these values to truly acknowledge it and, in the guise of calling us to do so, uses it as a vehicle to celebrate some of the very sins of our nature that causes the world to be such a cruel place to begin with.

Consumer Rap

I turned on Sirius XM Channel Shade 45 which is Eminem’s station today as I was riding about town and promptly heard this exchange between two DJs and the jest of the conversation went as followed “DJ1: Jay-Z made the Forbes 400 man. That’s big. DJ2: Oh word? DJ1: Yea oh with some guy named Warren BUFFET? DJ2: No Buffett I think. DJ1: Man I thought it was like something you eat.”

Sadly they never got Mr. Buffett’s name right. Nor did they ever correct themselves about Jay-Z. The correction is that Jay-Z is not anywhere near being on the Forbes 400 list of Wealthiest Americans. The price of admission to this list is a net worth of $1 Billion (of which only Oprah Winfrey is the only African-American present). Jay-Z’s net worth as reported by Forbes is somewhere between $150 Million as reported in ’09 and $450 Million as reported in ’10. This despite Forbes reported that Jay-Z only earning $63 Million over the past 12 Months. Forbes methodology for Hip-Hop Cash Kings, which Mr. Carter was ranked number one, includes their investments and such in their earnings and is pre-tax and management fees which usually amounts to 50% of an entertainer or athlete’s earnings. So I’ll let you ponder how or why Forbes turned $31.5 Million into a gain of $300 Million. I have my hunches but alas that’s not really what this article is about because the reality of it at the end of the day Jay-Z is one of the better businessmen that Hip-Hop has ever produced and very well might become a billionaire one day unlike many of his colleagues.

Coming back to the story at hand however. It is not surprising that many everyday people don’t know who Warren Buffett is despite his cult like following of fellow financiers and investors. Considered to be by many the greatest investor of all-time if you’re not in the finance world his name means about as much to most African-Americans as Soul-Glo would mean to a bald person. The coupling of Mr. Buffett and Jay-Z (arguably the greatest rapper of all-time) and what they promote into culture of their communities could not be more polar opposite despite both being very poignant businessmen in their own realm.

Mr. Buffett has made his wealth off frugality and investment. He has also recently (to my dismay) decided to leave the bulk of his fortune upon his demise to the Gates Foundation as part of a promotion for the wealthy to give more of their fortunes to philanthropic causes for humanity. On the very opposite spectrum Mr. Carter who came of age in the bling era has been a part of new rappers that has prided itself on the ability to promote consumerism with songs like “Ballin Remix” by Jim Jones or “Make It Rain” by Fat Joe or as Rick Ross infamously points out on “Speedin” – “I’m worth $15 Million and I’m trying to SPEND it all in one week.” The ability to consume above all and frequently with no wealth is the mantra that Hip-Hop today exudes. This is not to say that rappers don’t have a philanthropic bone in their body. Mr. Carter and others were at the forefront in giving to FEMA (for better or worse) after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. However, unless you dug deep in the annals of Google would be something one would never know and these moments are few and far between.

I tweeted the other day that rappers love to tell us how to spend our very small pennies as African-Americans (we have $0.07 for every $1.00 European Americans have) but they rarely tell us how to make any. They aren’t rapping about investing in stocks, bonds, rental properties, or philanthropy. In fact the only hip-hop artist I’ve ever heard go straight to the point was an artist named NYOIL with a song called “The Investor”. Needless to say this didn’t get the airplay it deserved. Consumer rap prides itself on artist making plugs for clothing, alcohol, basically anything WE don’t own and other anti-wealth behavior for a community that is at the bottom of the wealth totem pole in this country. Given that Latinos are fairly new on the scene and have already surpassed us in wealth has me begging, crying, and screaming for us to change our behavior pattern in terms of wealth. Given that hip-hop is a way of life that way of life clearly needs a makeover and the leadership in hip-hop needs to promote that change. Unfortunately I will not hold my breathe as most artist are simply labor to a company which is predominately owned by men like Mr. Buffett. Just remember that Mr. Carter’s Net Worth is a mere 10% of Mr. Buffett at best depending on which net worth of Forbes’ you choose to use. People may say we expect too much of our athletes & entertainers to be socially conscious. The ghost of Paul Robeson just rolled over in his grave.

Mr. Foster is the Interim Executive Director of HBCU Endowment Foundation, sits on the board of directors at the Center for HBCU Media Advocacy, & CEO of Sechen Imara Solutions, LLC. A former banker & financial analyst who earned his bachelor’s degree in Economics & Finance from Virginia State University as well his master’s degree in Community Development & Urban Planning from Prairie View A&M University. Publishing research on the agriculture economics of food waste as well as writing articles for other African American media outlets.