I read this and said to myself 'you know what? Nakia has the right idea'. Why share shit anymore? I’m gonna start lying to white people, too. I’m gonna lie about what certain words mean, what certain looks mean, our jargon, our entertainers, our entertainment – Ima lie my ass off. If they catch me calling myself Cole Brown because I’m attracted to larger built people, and they ask me who he is, ima say “oh, he was an Olympic diver for Sweden. Went from never havin a job and living in his Pacer to getting a silver medal. Inspiring, right?”. Cause when we tell y'all about our cultural shit, some of you get a little ahead of yourselves and start thinking you can master our Blackness. That shit is annoying and invasive as fuck like, bitch, look at all y'all shit - leave our shit the FUCK alone, especially since you don't want us to so much as LOOK at your shit. Oversharing is how we get Becky casper white Peterson curating at the fucking hip hop museum. No, no Becky, the fuck outta here, you got a whole wing of white pop bitches profiting off their nigger phase, go curate that shit, that's your lane in OUR museum.
Its like, as soon as it hits your hands, it gets dirty, misused, or, most of the time, you just high jack it and call it something else – fake ass Harlem shake. You cannot copy and paste my Black onto whatever temporary phase of life you're going through. Can you all not understand yourselves without trying to be us? You don't even like us, so the obsession is off putting. And then you can't even do the shit right, like, why do any of you try? You look stupid, you sound stupid, and your hair is fucking dirty, bitch, take those dreds out. They don't belong to you. See, they think that everything belongs to them by default because that’s what history class has taught them. They can manifest destiny everyone's culture until its utterly meaningless. “iTs JuSt hAiRRRRR”. FOH. When they do that, they take things from us on a deeper level. Its almost like we are not allowed to have something that is just ours, so they take what we do and rip all the Black out of it and give it to scary ass white people who can't handle our Black. This is nothing new.
This is why I will always cherish the 'Chitlin' Circuit'. That's where the love is. That's where our culture lives, develops, cultivates and thrives. That is where people hone their skills, whatever they did. Truth was in the Circuit. If you sucked, there would be no mindless throng of people coming to see you be cute. If you suck, we will tell you. Loudly. There is a sense of standards at the Chitlin circuit, you couldn't just get up there and do any old thing. Ain't no participation ribbons here, bitch! Be good or stay the fuck off the stage! And you better come with it! You had to give your all because we can feel passion. You can't fake it with us. But the goal with a lot of these artists was to hit the big time, meaning white money.
In the late 1980', all of the 1990's and the early 2000's, race relations got...interesting. I'm 40 going on 41 so I vividly remember that time. We gave white people a pass on a loooooot of shit in the name of inclusion and unity. A LOT of the forefathers of hip hop admired white businessmen. This was especially true in the 80's and 90's. You had to have a white person to get in that market. 'We gotta do what the white boys be doin, they making the real money!' They needed to have that white co-sign to add validity to whatever they were doing that white people wanted to profit off of and not give us a cent. They felt they needed that white seal of approval to feel valid. The music industry is the most blatant example of this. I remember in the 90’s this HUGE push and success we had with our own businesses. We stood proud in our own shit. Weren’t afraid to walk around with shirts saying ‘Its a Black thing you wouldn’t understand.’ We were so much into building our own table so we didn’t feel like we needed anything at their table. We had our own EVERYTHING. But what happened? What usually happens – money got involved.
Now, I'm not naive about racial barriers of that time, and I get the intention - trying to make hip hop mainstream, trying to get respect in the industry as an artform, etc. I get they had to play the game to get the monetary and social capital needed to expand the chitlin circuit. 'Legitimize' it if you will and bring it 'back to the 'hood bigger and better and build from there. But then they got that white money and all of a sudden, the chitlin circuit is a dirty word. Its no longer enough. They are in a pursuit of personal wealth – just like the white men in the industry they look up to so much. They think having their money means they have the same type of pull and power. They weren't community focused; it was all about self. All of a sudden, 'hip hop is universal, its not just for Black people!' You started to see Black owned businesses and companies being sold off to the highest bidding Chad corporation.
Think of the big power players in hip hop right now who aren’t Jay Z or Puff. I'm talking about the majority shareholders, the directors, the executives. Lyor Cohen is a huge name in hip hop - he's made his 75-million-dollar fortune off hip hop. Jimmy Iovine is another titan in hip hop, and he bagged a billion dollars off hip hop by marketing Black culture to a pop audience. Go look up who runs and owns these big record labels that some artists are desperate to get on. Look who’s running it. Because it ain't us, I don’t care how many tokens they show us. Why do we have to settle for seeing one or two Black executives at the table? Why do Black artists have to filter their culture through a bunch of white people in order for their art to get out there? I don't want to hear what degrees they have, how long they’ve been in the ‘biz’, how much they’ve been ‘influenced’ by our culture, how many Black people they’re around, how many Black people ‘vouch’ for them – its not and never will be the same as having US in the room. And despite what people would like to believe, we are MORE than qualified. ‘Oh, so you’re more qualified because you’re Black?’ Uh, yeah, bitch. Yup. And Black people need to start standing on that. We have to enforce what is ours and gatekeep what culture we have left that hasn't been sold off and shipped around the world to only have those same people get in our faces and tell us we don't have any culture. Mind you, they say that while lookin like they walked out of a Mary J. and Method Man music video shoot. I was sick when those two goofy niggas sold off Versus to that white as snow company. I read the articles - sold it off and now have 'big positions' with lofty titles at Triller. Now how the fuck you go from owning a successful venture to selling it off to be somebody's employee? Hustlin backwards for bank.
White people only feel that entitled to our culture, on top of their natural white audacity, because they get the go ahead from brothas who just want everybody to be friends and become what they think is 'worldly' and 'universal'. Like when Mos Def told Tommy Hilfiger he could say 'nigga'. Brotha.....and I say brotha, because Black women been tryna give y'all the 411 on your some of your white friends and you just call us haters and tell us to fuck off and get on the level of these white girls/latinas/'exoticals' and maybe we could get a seat at their table....brotha....I promise you....I promise you that if you tell your friends no, and set boundaries, they'll still be your friend. You know what, they might even respect you a little more. Or start respecting you for the very first time, who fuckin knows, give it a shot. And hey, if they have a problem with that, maybe they weren’t really your friends, and they never saw you as a true peer to begin with. You're basically an exotic pet to them, something to have for 'cool' points. But y'all get hives on ya dics at the thought of a white person not accepting you. You get to itchin. You gotta make that money, right? For your personal wealth. So some of y’all will go out of your way to make them comfortable in uncomfortable conversations and discussions, be their champion in the hood, defend their 'honor' to other Black people, shield them from accountability, cheer for their half assed off beat dancin, and root for them all the way into a stain and drain on our culture. Like a fucking kardashian. Niggas will give up the keys to our cultural kingdom for a white man’s cosign and a white chick with social clout that can get him some hosting gigs. Cause some of you niggas act like raggedy lowdown backwater two-dollar two-bit scallywag ass thirsty whores who ain't never been nowhere when you get around rich white people. Pull yo skirt down, my nigga.
Fun Fact: This is what comes up when you Google images of 'Hip Hop'....it ain't us.
