Boyce Watkins Thoughts on Lil Wayne and Commercialized Hip Hop

Dr. Boyce Watkins
http://www.boycewatkins.com/

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Those who know me also know that I love hip hop. Yes, there are some negative elements in hip hop, but many people forget that it's ultimately the corporate monster that makes it difficult for positive hip hop music to reach the light of day. I think that healthy debates on the nature of hip hop are relevant, and I am not referring to Oprah's town hall meeting on the topic last year, which really wasn't fair to the genre. I told her so in a CNN appearance with Roland Martin and Wendy Williams.

To join our Black Money advice list, please click here. My thoughts on the Lil Wayne and hip hop issue are below. I don't hate Lil Wayne, I actually feel sorry for him. He reminds me of Tupac, with the same energy, creativity, brilliance, productivity and incredibly self-destructive behavior that led to his legendary status. The difference, however, is that there was an element of social conscience Tupac could bring to his music that Lil Wayne does not. I am not interested in bashing the brother, but I must call it for what it is. Hip hop does not have to be an empty genre, with every song about sex in the club, smoking weed or blinging out of control. There's more to life than that. We should be teaching our kids to pursue "intellectual bling", so that we can search for true meaning in our lives and to be intelligent enough to stop being pimped. Hip hop can be (and has been) a part of that journey. Again, I love hip hop, and I even love Lil Wayne.....sometimes.

Respect peeps, see you next time.

Dr. Boyce Watkins
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Hip Hop Commercialized? Buffoonery or something more complicated?
By Dr. Boyce Watkins

I am not a huge fan of Lil Wayne. I don’t hate him, I just don’t love him. His music doesn’t make me move, but it doesn’t make me sick. The thing that challenges my ability to love Lil Wayne is the environment within which he is operating.

Lil Wayne can be considered, by some, to be a modern day minstrel show: gold chains, diamond grills, 10,000 tattoos on parts of his body that have no business being tattooed, you name it. He engages in the stereotypical rock’n roll/hip hop lifestyle: guns, drugs, alcohol and random women. I fear for Lil Wayne, because at this pace, he might be dead before he turns 35. Lil Wayne makes Tupac Shakur and Eazy E look like conservative school kids.

Lil Wayne impacts the world in which he lives, sells records by the boat load and impacts far more young men than he probably should. It’s not that he chooses to be a role model, he just is one. But when we see Lil Wayne and express justifiable disdain for his behavior and persona, there is certainly more to be said.

You see, Lil Wayne is a product. The corporate executives pulling the strings and making the decision to sign deals with Lil Wayne also see him as a product. A product has to sell to its target audience, or it will not reach the sole objective of any capitalist venture: to make a profit. Not just any profit, but the highest possible profit within legal constraints. The corporate model doesn’t care about the community; it doesn’t care about health, workers, the environment or anything else. Like the financial machine that led to the breakdown of our global economic system, cogs in the wheel that pursue any objective other than pure profit maximization are quickly punished and replaced.

The target audience of hip hop is not black teenagers in the hood…..they don’t have any money, relatively speaking. The target audience for hip hop consists of middle and upper class kids in the suburbs, and those on college campuses. Those are the kids who line up at the record store and cause server outages at I-tunes when new albums are released. That is who the executives are trying to impress, and that is who Lil Wayne must impress in order to get a record deal.

The problem with Lil Wayne is that the transfer of commodities taking place between the recording industry and white America is one that lies over the economic heads of many African Americans. It doesn’t mean that those in the hood play no role in public consumption, but we are certainly not the biggest players in this game. Like a big bridge in the sky, we don’t impact the transactions, but we closely observe them. We don’t always buy the albums, but we watch the videos, read the articles, and hear the news stories about whose album sold the most copies during its first week. Due to the fact that there is a lack of diversity of images of black men in media, we have children who see the image of Lil Wayne and transform him into an involuntary role model. White kids don’t have to use Lil Wayne as a role model, since they see 50 new white men on TV every single day. Black youth don’t see doctors, lawyers and professors on TV: they see criminals, thugs, athletes and entertainers.

Lil Wayne’s environmental impact on the black community is what we in economics would call “a negative externality”. The fact that he makes it cool to use drugs, carry guns and engage in anti-social behavior does, in my opinion, cause irreparable harm to the black community. The problem is that the black community has little leverage to control these externalities, since we are neither the dominant consumers of hip hop, the controllers of media or the owners of record labels. Like the bridge in the sky I mentioned above. The presence of networks like BET or magazines like Essence and Ebony is relatively minor when compared to the dominance of CNN, Universal Records or Time Magazine. It’s like bringing a knife to a fight between nuclear superpowers.

Those of us upset about negative images in hip hop can protest all night at the next Lil Wayne concert and perhaps even have an intervention with Wayne to get him to see the err of his ways. The problem with this logic is that even if Lil Wayne does change his behavior, there is a long list of starving kids in the projects that the record label executives can find to replace Lil Wayne after he has been dropped from the brand. Also, getting Lil Wayne to invoke a more positive image will not change the fact that the consumers and producers of his product (gangster rap) are more willing to purchase albums made by black men when they feel that the performer has indulged their need to enjoy a stereotypical "thug-nificent" fantasy. Wayne may have some degree of industry power, but it is not as much as we might think. The in-studio recording of Lil Wayne’s product is not what creates the magic. The magic of a product is created through the marketing, distribution, financing and purchase of that product. That is done by the labels, and none of the large label owners are African American.

So, does Lil Wayne represent a modern day minstrel show? My answer is yes. He and others like him are told to behave more “thug like” and in more ridiculous and extravagant ways in order to get the attention necessary to sell records. It is, unfortunately, not smart business for a rapper to brag about being intelligent. Also, it is a lack of diversity of black male images in media that give black youth few alternatives for self-perception that go beyond that of Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Flavor Flav and Juan Williams (the Fox News analyst who, along with Jessie Lee Peterson, enjoys bashing the black community). If any of these men chose to be forthright, insightful and firm in their support of the African American community, they would be fired immediately. But when we protest and challenge the system that is negatively impacting our communities, my argument is that we should look past the puppets and deal with the puppet masters.

Some would argue that by attacking rappers for the negative impacts of their lyrics, we are simply killing the messengers and going after the weaker scapegoat. While I am not one to judge whether the messenger should be killed, I am also an advocate for finding a way to get to the root of the message. Someone is controlling the messages of hip hop, and it’s not that poor kid from the projects who finally made it big.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and author of “What if George Bush were a Black Man?” He makes regular appearances in national media, including CNN, ESPN, BET and CBS. For more information, please visit BoyceWatkins.com

Your Black World Speaks To Green Party Presidential Nominee, Cynthia McKinney

Interview with Green Party Presidential Nominee, Cynthia McKinney, by Tolu Olorunda.

For many, the name "Cynthia McKinney" is synonymous with loaded-descriptions such as "progressive," "activist," "relentless," "fighter," "frank," and "courageous."Cynthia McKinney has been described by political-prisoner and internationally-renowned journalist, Mumia Abu Jamal, as "bold," "outspoken," and a "woman of substance." Earlier this year, Black Agenda Report Executive Editor, Glen Ford, remarked on how Cynthia McKinney is - as perceived by him - "the only vehicle through which progressives can... begin the process of rebuilding a mass, Black-led movement for real social change." The once 6-term Georgian Congresswoman has since become a leading voice in the anti-war movement, anti-death penalty movement and human-rights movement. She is, without a doubt, a monumental structure in the landscape of Black activism. While in Congress, she fought aggressively for the rights of the financially-disempowered. In 2007, she decided to leave the Democratic Party, and become a member of The Green Party. It was also in 2007, when she decided to attempt a run at the presidency. On July 12 this year, Cynthia McKinney, alongside Rosa Clemente, was nominated as the Green Party's choice for President and Vice-President respectively. She has ever since, embarked on a journey to enlighten, inform and educate everyday citizens around the country, on what their alternatives - in this electoral cycle - are, and the essentiality of election-integrity. I had the distinguished opportunity to speak with Cynthia McKinney on her political-background, the role of Third Parties, and her "Power to the People" platform which has recently caught the attention of disgruntled electorates:

For those who don't know, when did your political journey effectively take-off, and what prompted it?

I started out at the Georgia House of Representatives in 1989, and was sworn in after the 1988 campaign -- but nobody thought I would win (the political pundits and the corporate press especially). And we were able to prove them wrong. From there, I participated in the efforts of the State of Georgia to make sure that every Georgian was counted in the census, because that meant more money would come to Georgia from the federal government. It also meant that we could expand the abilities to elect candidates of our choice -- for those of us who are underrepresented in the political process. So I participated in making sure that everybody in the state of Georgia was counted -- particularly in the Black communities, where the participation rate is lower. Through that, we could then seek the full application of the voting rights act, in making sure that the districts drawn on every level of government was one that included opportunities for Black voters to elect their candidate of choice. We then went, deliberately and methodically, through the process for City Council, County Commission, the State Legislature, and then the United States Congress. And of course, there was a lot of turmoil that was created at my insistence that we have what was put forward as the "Black Max Plan." That plan actually ended up helping more blacks get elected to office in the State of Georgia. From there, the issue was the war. I went to the floor of the House and spoke out against George H.W. Bush's War - with the bombing of Baghdad - and all of my colleagues got out and walked out on me. And they compared me to Julian Bond, who a generation earlier, had been punished because of his views against the Vietnam War. So I decided to run for Congress, because I saw the 'good ol' boys' of Georgia, trying to pick who the next Congressional member would be. So the governor and speaker of the House both had 'their candidates,' and I figured that the people should have their candidate and I decided to run. When I ran - because of my advocacy of the Black Max plan - I was likened to Angela Davis, and so the Julian Bond and Angela Davis characterizations (done by the corporate press) were supposed to be insulting to me, but they didn't know that Julian Bond and Angela Davis were heroes of mine. And that began my political career.

How did you make the transition from the Georgia House of Representatives to the United States Congress?

Well, it was an easy transition, because I learned the legislative process and parliamentary procedure in the Georgia Legislature. I also learned that inauthentic leadership can be easily co-opted, and that the elected leadership we had in the State of Georgia was ineffective in terms of changing the policy-outcomes and quality of life for the people of Georgia. At one time, we (Georgia) had the largest legislative Black Caucus in the country, but increasingly, the personalities that got elected were more interested in the positions, rather than wielding the powers on behalf of the community. So, we went from authentic to inauthentic leadership, and the challenge of our community is to ensure that our leadership is always authentic, and speaking to our hopes, dreams and aspirations; and pushing a policy-line that should increase our quality of life. If you don't see that in the campaign of a candidate, you won't see it in the administration of a candidate. And therefore, that candidate represents somebody else's interest; not our own. But we have not been easily capable of identifying authentic vs. inauthentic leadership.

Throughout your career, you've been an outspoken and vehement defender of human-rights. What is the state of human-rights in the world today?

It's abysmal. The states of human rights is abysmal in the world today, and a large measure of it is because of interference on the part of the United States, in the arsenal of economic and military power that it wields over people. The unwillingness of the American voter to change the leadership in Washington must come to an end.

As a member of Congress, you introduced legislations to unseal the records of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Tupac Shakur. Why was that important to you?

I think the public deserves the truth, and we know from the December 1999 trials, that a jury came back with the findings that the United States government was involved in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And in just the same way, the interested public hasn't been told the truth about Tupac Shakur, whose mother was a member of the Black Panther Party, and whose father-figure was - I believe - a member of the Black liberation army.

In 2007, you decided to take a public stance against the Democratic Party. What was the last straw for you?

Basically, on my birthday, March 17 of last year, I spoke in front of the pentagon, and my position continues to be vindicated, because now, the Democrats are complicit in the FISA Bill, the continual funding of the war, and the removal of impeachment bills from the table; and all the basic needs of the American people (single payer health-care system, subsidies for education -- so no child graduates with a student loan). Under the rulership of the Democrats and the Republicans, people don't have what they need.

Why did you feel the Green Party was best suited for the brand of activism you're involved in?

The Green Party has put support for reparations in its 2004 platform. They put recognition of the genocide against the indigenous people in this country on their platform. They put a statement against racial-profiling and police brutality on their platform. And this was all before I was ever associated with The Green Party. So I found a party that reflects my values.

You clinched the Green Party Presidential Nomination in July. How is the campaign so far; and how much has the "Power to the People" message resonated?

The campaign could always use more resources; so we ask people to please go to our website, runcynthiarun.org and donate, because we're up against a very powerful and mighty machine. And even the Gladiators, who were put into the arena against each other and certain animals, were giving swords to fight with. So if we are to defend the interests of the people, we at least have to have a mechanism to defend ourselves -- because we are going against the most powerful entities on the planet. So we have a lot of people agreeing with us, but we need them to go the extra step; and one is to vote for us and the other to donate to us -- so we can spread the good news about our plans even more. We want to kick-start a movement to inspire young people to get involved outside the two-party paradigm that boxes us into solutions that don't answer the problems that people confront in their lives.

What is the fundamental bedrock of the "Power to the People" platform?

It's the reconstruction manifesto, and we explain that we are in favor of the elimination of the drug-war, the elimination of prisons for profit, the elimination of U.S. militarism, a repeal of NAFTA and all other so-called free-trade agreements. We want a livable wage; we want a single-payer health-care system, and we want election integrity.

I want to pose two questions to you, which have been formerly directed at Sen. Obama. "In the first 100 days of your presidency, what would you do to close the gaps between Blacks and Whites in America"?

First of all, I would submit to Congress a budget that does exactly that. The disparities that exist in our country are longstanding, and they exist because there is a legacy of slavery that has not yet been addressed. And after slavery - which denied the right to read, education, life, liberty and identity to Africans who had been transported - there was a denial of the right to economic freedom. Then it moved from that to a denial of the right to physical freedom (incarceration). And with that came the convict slave labor program -- which was rampant throughout the country, particularly in the South. All of this came in the aftermath of slavery; and then of course you had the Jim Crow laws that were practiced across the country -- with the statute of Plessy v. Ferguson. So, basically, you have a story of disenfranchisement, down to a denial of identity and culture; and somehow, we survived. What the country now needs to do is to implement a massive program on education, economic enfranchisement and jobs. Instead of focusing the money on those who have, we should focus it on those in need.

Secondly, Cynthia McKinney, "What about the Black Community"?

That is the entire focus of the reconstruction platform, which includes the release of all political-prisoners. We know that we have to change the legal landscape in order for justice to prevail in this country, because the criminal justice system is criminal in its injustice at the moment. We know that the economic structure of this country has to be completely changed, because it is based on rewarding those who don't work, and taxing those who do. The cultural environment of this country has to change, because of the corporate domination and usurpation of Hip-Hop culture and the culture of young people.

What is your assessment of the overwhelming support Sen. Obama is receiving within the Black Community, and how do you plan on winning some of those votes?

Well, we're going to continue to stand on the values that we espouse, and if people are attracted to those values, they would support them, and if they are not, they will support the other side.

Finally, Senator Obama seems so be experiencing some obstacles in reaching Latinos. Do you plan on courting the Brown vote?

Well, my running mate is an Afro-Latina; a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. The circles that she has traveled in are young Black and Brown. So we would like to get as much of that vote as we can; alongside the white-progressives who are willing to support our ticket.


Watch Cynthia McKinney's Green Party Acceptance Speech:



This interview was conducted by Tolu Olorunda, Staff Writer for YourBlackWorld.com