Do We Want Our Masters With Our Masters: Beyond Black Capitalist Reasoning To Culturally Competent Curation

I have Tidal (even though it continues to annoy anyone who wants to share music with me). I chose to side with a Black man during the streaming wars in the mid-2010’s, not actually understanding what Hov was doing by creating his own streaming platform. To this day we don’t know the value of a stream, but having a Black owned space to compete with the tech giants of Apple and Spotify was valuable enough for me to sign up. I still have Tidal even after Jigga Man sold it (mostly because I have a 550 song playlist that I can’t lose).  But I say all that to say, the streaming service that I chose lost the war. Nobody has Tidal except for me and 2 of Memphis Bleek’s cousins who are still loyal to Roc-A-Fella. But I wonder whether the battle I am focused on is even relevant. As Black Capitalists espouse the 10% theory all throughout Atlanta (which is just Reaganomics in social theory and ultimately disavowed by its creator Dubois), young Black folks have become disillusioned with the economic theory. But if we don’t own our music for the purpose of exploiting its capital like a major label (just melanated), what is the purpose? Culturally competent curation.

The ethics of money and art has always been contentious to say the least. However, what about an art form that has never existed outside of the shadow of capitalism. We all know hip hop started in the Bronx in the late 70’s, with poor Black and Brown folks. We sometimes think of the effects of capitalism on the creators of the art, but I have rarely thought of the effects on the art form itself. From the beginning, there have been unscrupulous labels stealing from artists trying not only to make something beautiful, but also to provide for their families. The theft of money from Black artists is something I do not need to cover. But I do think it important to state that Black capitalists with the “same hue as you” have been using the system to steal from our own people. For legacy purposes, we could go back to the many duplicitous deals of Barry Gordy, but Black hip hop capitalists have ran the same play as the master several times (think Pharrell with Kelis, 1501 Certified Entertainment with Meg Thee Stallion, BabyGrande Records with StoveGod Cooks or Diddy with every artist he ever signed). Black capitalism is proof of the pathology pointed to by Fanon in “Black skin, White Masks”, the goal of the Black Capitalist is simply to be the same as the master mentioned above, but include themselves in the control.

Despite being born out of and into capitalism in some ways, hip hop has struggled against it whether in the form of Black Capitalism or white Capitalism. We are currently in a crucial time in the music business, the large label monopoly on Black music is slipping due to technological advancement. Maybe it is because I live here, but I credit this technological epiphany to the Chicago music scene. Once the teen drill rappers found out they could record their own music, put it out and garner international attention, then quickly thereafter Chance followed up by winning a grammy without label backing off of a free mixtape. The power dynamic began to shift. The power over art was back in the people’s hands.  It was not long ago that recording was done via analog and distribution of that expensive process was reliant on physical media, a process so expensive that only the labels had access to it. To steal an idea from socialist theory, the ability to record and distribute music would be the means of production. However, once a hard drive on a laptop could hold enough data to make a song  and that same song could be uploaded to the internet, people started making music outside of the label ran/owned session and distribution. Instead, the people owned the means of production (of course this is not completely accurate to socialism, which would have all means of productions owned by the community instead of by private individuals- but run with me guys!). What labels still own that hip hop has not been able to garner control over is the means to produce a superstar. As the power of label’s shrink, the only thing they still have monopoly over is the ability to provide the gross amount of funding to create a super star. In recent memory there have been a lot of discussions regarding the absence of new hip hop super stars. I think that the encroachment of the people on the power formerly held by labels through technology is one piece and the other piece (as always) is patriarchy. The new hip hop super stars are women, but we will not acknowledge them as such. From Cardi and Meg to Doechii and Doja these women are not only the current, but the next generation of superstar. But none of this is what I actually wanted to talk about.

In 2013, Kanye (who was not yet disallowed from my annual lists) released Blood on the Leaves. I was in undergrad at the time (chill I’m not that old), and towards the end of the class my professor asked the class how they felt about Kanye using a sample of one of the best protest songs of all time- Strange Fruit. To this day, my largely white class’s reaction has not sat well with me. Them unanimously saying that a Black man should not use Black art to express himself felt oppressive. Further, the idea that Nina Simone, or her estate, had no power to dictate who can use her art feels like an added layer of oppression. It is important to note that Nina Simone was creating art during the analog and physical distribution era with no possible way to know of what was to come (it is equally important to note that her estate has been battling to clawback the rights to her music in the courts for YEARS). As such, the ability to dictate what Black artists can do with Black art created by our ancestors is largely controlled by the same system which hoped to exploit the original artist decades ago. Part of this is my discomfort with white America having control over Black art. However, as described above, the answer to the exploitative white capitalist system, is not the exploitative Black capitalist system. Instead, I think my concern is solved through culturally competent curation.

 In 2018, Trippie Red released Topanga; the song, like a large amount of music I listen to, is about sex, money and murder. What makes this different is that it prominently features a sample from gospel classic “It Aint Over” by Maurette Brown Clark. If it isn’t unsavory enough that a song about the everlasting hope that one has in God is sampled in a song with the lyrics “bitch I ain’t going for nothing/ got this choppa on me then I’m bustin”, Trippie Redd takes it to a new level. The video features a feeble, flawed and faulty attempt at faux satanic iconography. Showing the intentional nature of using the gospel song in a way that the original artist would not only disagree with, but is in direct contradiction with her beliefs and what she stood for. The publishers of “It Ain’t Over” Key of A Music Publishing and Spring Air Music and the record label that she was on at the time Atlanta International should be ashamed of themselves. A truly dastardly approach to an artists life work for the sake of money. This is almost more duplicitous than the stealing of money as it is the use of her art in a way that taunts her deeply held faith. Topanga came out 7 years ago, has millions of views/streams across platforms and is still available. It is only someone with enough integrity who would stop this from happening in the face of profit (further complicated by the fact that Trippie is a Black artist disrespecting the legacy of another Black artist). With all of that said, a person truly needs a massive amount of cultural competency to see that the use of Black art is more than capital for the sake of money, but rather part of the story of a people. As such, owners of our music should approach it with the white gloves of a museum archivist, curating using a culturally competent method.

To clarify, I am not condemning money itself, but rather the idea that financial gain is the sole reason why Black folks should own their masters. The free markets have never led to our freedom. If you notice, throughout this I have been using Jay-Z lyrics. I did this not to add to the already existing critiques of the largest Black capitalist in hip hop, but rather to add nuance. Hovito has often acted against his financial interests because of and in furtherance of his cultural competency. A short list of such actions that are readily available on my mind include: paying for Meek’s lawyers, getting Meg out of the deal mentioned above (there are rumors that he’s currently helping with Stovito), and bankrolling the deal for the forthcoming Clipse album. I say that to say, maybe it is not an either/or but rather a yes/and to the money/culture false dichotomy I have drawn. It is not the money that is the problem, but rather the exploitation. And as long as we live in a system that the willingness to exploit humans grants riches, the problem will continue.