Kanye West & the entertainment industry

Usavior

I believe that a higher power, whether you call it chance or God, gives us the tools each and every day for us to build our liberation. I believe that it must come first with liberation of the mind, where we throw off all of the programmed thinking that has been force-fed us for so long, which means that we have to begin to reanalyze the meanings of things that we encounter in our everyday lives.

For example, the entertainment industry is a very powerful tool for those who care to use it. Either it can be a very potent drug of escape for those of us without hope of ever affecting any significant change in our real lives, or it can be an instrument of brainwashing. If we’ve noticed, much like larger corporations are swallowing up all of the smaller ones and merging into one giant oppressive force globally, so too has the entertainment industry merged in such a way where you can’t tell where the music industry begins and the movie industry ends. Nor can they figure out where the sports celebrities fit.

Kanye West

All of these industries are dominated by Black people. Our talent is unfathomable. But we don’t control the resources that determine success in these arenas. Now most of us feel this is an old song and dance: yeah, we don’t control distribution blah blah. But in a real way we don’t even control how it is that we are reflected. Meaning if we don’t play along, then we’re voiceless.

The golden age of cinema, at least for Black folks, took place in the seventies. We are all familiar with the Black exploitation films, which many believed to be parodies of real efforts for Black liberation. But we were kicking whitey’s ass on film and we were bad, Black and beautiful.

What happened?

Well for the naysayer who felt that these films diminished us in many ways, there were some who realized that as techniques became more advanced, as actors took their roles more seriously and messages to the Black man and woman became more complex and hard-hitting (we can cite an number of examples: “The Spook Who Sat by the Door” and “The Final Comedown”) where mass revolution was the main theme and not simply implied on the level on one individual’s fight against “The Man,” some began to quake in their proverbial boots. They realized that they’d better put a stop to this trend before somebody began to put two and two together off-screen and start a real revolution.

When Kanye West emerged on the scene, he was lauded as a producer and while his songs weren’t considered gangster, nor were his lyrics dripping with Black power. There was a healthy smattering of clothes, how fly the raps are, girls, etc. In fact, every now and then he would mention something that sounded half-way conscious and then throw something else in that confused the hell out of people. He was what George Bush would have called a hip-hop flip-flopper. So the Black intellectuals began arguing the inconsistencies that he exhibited and likening them to the entire Black race. White people continued to dance.

But Kanye West portended doom for the entertainment industry. What happened was that so many of us, Black and white included, were so used to underestimating Black men, especially rappers, that they just took him for another artist trying to contort himself to please as many listeners as possible. Very few were paying attention to what constituted artistic metamorphism that was at once very symbolic and very on purpose.

Fast forward to his song, “Diamonds Are Forever” { most notably, the remixed version—WW} , which is one of the most courageous positions to take because it deals with a serious issue in our community where we pump up this image of rocking ice and not really understanding what it means to children who look like us dying while mining these rocks over thousands of miles away where we can’t see them.

Of course “Jesus Walks” which is not simply a song that says gangsters need Jesus too, but a real indictment of the armed forces and the ways in which they brainwash our young people. “Late Registration” pokes serious fun at how rabidly people pursue degrees which ultimately wind up as liner for kitchen drawers or shoe stuffers for homeless men. Very unpopular views, very subtly melded into rhymes, hypnotic beats and lighthearted comedy—brainwashing at is best.

The grand finale, which I won’t go into in any detail because I’m sure you’ve all seen it, is the “Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People” Telethon. Nobody saw it coming because they think that Black folk are not only stupid, but not able to think past fat gold ropes and iced-out jump suits.

Now come the dangerous times. Because America will not take the shenanigans of one outspoken n——r lightly. Look at what they did in Iraq. Bombs, tanks, thousands of troops against a handful of valiant rebels with dusty weapons. State of the art technology against a rock throwing mob. What will they send against the Kanyes of the world?

Katrina was a wakeup call, but so is this ensuing drama. Follow it closely. It’s more than just a distraction from the war in Iraq. It is an on-going battle in the ongoing war for the hearts and minds of our people.

Usavior is a producer with Black Waxx Recordings and Filmworks. He is also a member of the New York based Artists and Activists United for Peace .and the Troops Out Now Coalition.