THE SELLING OF OUR SOULS: MY TAKE ON DIDDY AND HIP-HOP

They say opinions are like a-holes; everybody has one. So, here’s mine. I don’t celebrate anyone's downfall. I’m old enough to remember when hip-hop came onto the music scene. A nephew of mine was very excited about it, but I didn’t get it because those guys weren’t singing. They were talking. It wasn’t until I began to really listen to what they were saying that I understood the enormity of hip-hop. Young African American men had innately tapped into what their souls had been created to do. They were doing what their ancestors before them perhaps would have done if it had not been for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. These modern-day griots were telling the stories of their villages on vinyl in lyrical poetry form. That is, until they sold their souls for a record contract. Looking back at the early days of hip-hop, especially when it was still underground and spoke of social injustice, hip-hop was a cultural expression of what it meant to be Black in America. However, the thing that they call hip-hop today is not,” The Culture” as the Recording Industry, BET, or Essence would have you believe. Hip-hop, like everything good and beautiful that African Americans have created from their shared experiences has been stolen and broken into distorted pieces. Instead of spotlighting inequities and calling for social justice in this country, rappers put out diss tracks verbally attacking each other. But even before the personal diss tracks got to the present-day level, we had the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that, I’m sure, led to the unnecessary deaths of an unknown number of young people caught in the crosshair of gang rivalry hyped up by a lyric of a song. The commercialization of this art form, which was effectively the selling of the artist's soul when the artist chose to say the Black women were big booty bitches and hoes; and Black men were drug dealing, pimps, and players who couldn’t commit to anything or anyone was when hip-hop was no longer, “The Culture.”

We have got to stop selling ourselves. We don’t need to denigrate our women, our men, or ourselves to sell a record. Female artists, keep your clothes on when you go onstage, and let your voices and the lyrics move your audience. Male artists, we don’t need you to tear down another Black man or lie about your drug or gang-banging background. Just tell us what you have learned in your life’s journey, how you came to be a man in this foreign land, and how you love without too much detail.

If this Diddy thing is true, he was not alone in it. He was not allowed to operate for years without people in the record industry knowing what was going on. I say, let him and anyone else who participated or allowed him and others to rape children and other adults be revealed and punished. Let the industry burn down to the ground, and then maybe Hip-Hop can start over again and become what it was meant to be.

BLACK, PERSON OF COLOR, OR TIME TO REBRAND?

Historically, a person was considered to be Black if they had one drop of Black blood. The one-drop rule was used during slavery in America to assign the children of mixed ethnic groups to the status of enslaved people and to promote the ideology of White supremacy. This also created a caste system based on the color of one's skin. You were legally White if you were a Free Person of Color before the Civil War and had less than one-eighth of Black blood. Many Free People of Color cloaked themselves in the safety of whiteness during that period in America’s history.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, and we have a Woman of Color, running to be the President of the United States of America. If anyone questions her Blackness, they are immediately looked upon as someone who swallowed the Kool-Aid that the orange man gave them. Little did Trump know when he asked, “When did Kamala become Black?” that he would spark a thoughtful response. I asked myself, “If her mother is Indian from India, and her father is from Jamaica, where were her Black Aunties and Big Mommas?” What I was really saying with that question was Kamala Harris’s experience in America was not the experience of African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved on southern plantations for hundreds of years. Her experience was that of a second-generation immigrant. Her parents came to America willingly to seek a better life. My parents and their parents and their parents…knew that the American Dream and the inscriptions on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” was not referring to them.

I will cast my vote for Kamala Harris because she is far better than the orange alternative, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for her to right America's wrongs. I will, however, hope that she remembers the warm embraces of those Black Aunties and Big Mommas who took care of her until her mother could pick her up from daycare at the end of the day.

I am more than a Person of Color, and the Black woman descriptor is too general. Apparently, it is advantageous in certain circumstances for some to call themselves a Black person in America when, in fact, they are people of color with a distinct cultural and ethnic heritage that is vastly different from descendants of the enslaved. Instead of passing for White, some people are now passing for Black. That is until being Black becomes a little too real, pedestrian, or no longer serves a purpose.

So, Black people whose roots run deep in the blood-soaked soil of former plantations, what should we call ourselves now? What we call ourselves should separate us from color and identify us as descendants of the people who built this country and its incredible wealth. Our history, unique struggle, and redress in this country can’t be consumed in the pan-ethnic moniker “People of Color, of Black.”

HARLEM IS A VIBE

Harlem is where I found My People. After three trips to New York, I finally went to Harlem. Walking up and down 125th Street and Lennox, strolling down neighborhoods lined with brownstones, I could see myself living there.

New York’s contrast between the ultra-rich and the working class is so stark that it is disconcerting. I stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel in Manhattan's theatre district, within walking distance of Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and 5th Avenue. One afternoon, I had lunch at a small café near Central Park where an older female New Yorker sat alone having lunch. I couldn’t help but notice the huge solitaire diamond ring that extended to her knuckle. Her large Louis Vuitton monogram multicolor bag lying casually in the chair across from her. She interrupted our conversation when she heard us planning to get an Uber back to the hotel. She laughingly told us it was close enough to walk, but we could take the subway if we didn’t want to walk. The woman gave us directions to the subway and told us which trains we could take. After that excursion, we traveled by subway often, getting directions from the hotel concierge, taking careful note of whether we were going uptown or downtown and the letters and numbers of the trains. We only took an Uber a few times because two women in the group had knee injuries. 

Of all the places I visited, the New York Public Library with the stone lions in front was the most impressive. The massive collection of knowledge and works of literature stored in such an imposing structure was quite frankly overwhelming. Stone pillars, marble floors, masterful artworks, and chandelier-lined hallways. Opulent private rooms for scholars and public rooms for laypersons to study. Coming to such a place whenever I wanted would be a privilege. The view of New York on 5th Avenue juxtaposed with the street vendor of 125th Street in Harlem shocks the senses, but Harlem felt real. The history of the Harlem Renaissance was etched into the brownstones I passed, and whispers of Louis Armstrong’s horn floated down the street. I could envision Langton Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston looking down at these same streets and writing about our struggles today. The hustle and flow of Harlem mixed with the unity that we are in the struggle together was the feeling I walked away with when I left Harlem.

I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I know it won’t be the same Harlem I saw on this trip because there were glaring indications that it would not be the Black Mecca it is now. The vibe that Harlem was and is will soon be watered down into something less soulful. As I took the train uptown back to the hotel, I couldn’t help but pray that this place called Harlem, with its cultural and historical significance, would not be lost to gentrification.

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.” ----Marcus Mosiah Garvey