It’s partly the gun-totting advocacy, the blatant misogyny, the shamelessly celebrated chauvinism and the cleverly arranged vituperation that makes me want to altogether abandon the “music” (to be so presumptuous as to label it such) that I’ve come to love. It’s partly that, yes, but that doesn’t come close to what might be the last straw on this camel’s back. As a man – granted, an effeminate, epicene and at time sensitive man, but a man nonetheless – feminism is a study I didn’t expect to cross paths with and a class on feminism, seeking to edify the world at large on the plight of women, motherhood and femininity in general is one I didn’t anticipate I’d be enrolled in much less enjoy. As the only male among opinionated and quite convincing females and as the semester went on, short of desiring to be a woman, I began to feel I should daily wield placards supporting whatever agenda my fellow women had. Alas, as much as women are demeaned in rap music, and in rap videos reduced to nothing but jiggling breasts and bouncing buttocks, they are the lesser victims in this pandemic for the rappers themselves – enslaved by their vices – are the biggest victims of their own devices.

Lil' Wayne

Without unnecessary prodding from Vibe, The Source, Rolling Stone or whatever other publication one is supposed to read before making the informed decision on what CD to purchase; without that and without heeding the annoyingly pervasive NPR/PRI-esque pretentious commentary by social gadflies and pop-culture pundits at VH-1 and MTV (and rarely at BET), I went out and on a whim (emphasis on “on a whim”) purchased a CD by a certain rapper. Lil’ Wayne is his name but you can call him ‘The Baby’ but if you can’t say ‘The Baby’, you mustn’t say it at all. Anyway, I digress.

To my expectation and satisfaction, the CD followed the rap music blueprint with its spurious tales of gallivanting neighborhood youth turned gangsters, turned millionaire, turned gangster millionaires (the irony). In between the sing-songy refrains, Wayne tells of his numerous sequestered mistresses whose sole job it is to turn Colombia’s #1 illegal cash crop into profit in his pocket. In 20 tracks and with only the aforementioned material, Wayne manages to exhibit impossible wordsmithery, delivers iambic pentameters that Shakespeare would be jealous of and indulges his listener in more brand pimping or whoring (whichever you prefer) than does Lauren Weisberger her readers. There are the Prada shoes and La Perla underwear for his bitches, the Gucci shoes and sunshades, the Dolce & Gabbana and Evisu jeans and of course – lest his gangster millionaire status be revoked – there’s the Jacob the Jeweler customized jewelry, I’m sorry, bling, that need only be an ad lib in a track that has nothing to do with either jewelry or Jacob himself. That’s just the nature of the genre.

Lauren Weisberger

At the risk of having a grudge held against me for so long that even when I’m married, living in my Californian cookie cutter suburban home on a cul-de-sac, just me, my wife and my 2 ½ kids, I’ll still be afraid of being gunned down I’ll say this:

I’d listened to the CD twenty thousand times and only on the twenty thousand and first listen did I realize that behind the abrasive lyrics, behind the women bashing, behind the affected rich-gangster blasé persona and the still-petulant reformed drug dealer attitude, right there in between the lines – in between the bars, if you will – were these absolutely subtle homoerotic undertones that have since my twenty thousand and second listen ceased to be all that subtle.

in between the bars, if you will – were these absolutely subtle homoerotic undertones that have since my twenty thousand and second listen ceased to be all that subtle.

Wayne seems to have a profound respect for the man partly responsibly for his success as a rapper. His respect for the man he calls ‘Pop’ drives him to treacly and quite frankly, gay admissions of adoration. Barely two minutes into the first track, Wayne reminds Pop that it’s ‘money over bitches’ when it comes to their relationship, a philosophy he reiterated too frequently throughout the CD while painting the women around him as whores who do no more than count his money and cook his crack. That leaves the listener – at least it left me – thinking that Wayne is neither very handy nor any good at math.

It also got me thinking, what if all these bitches and hoes, all these victimized women in Wayne’s pathetic ditties just up and left the damn guy, then what? The only people left with him would be his posse and Pop. Then? Then, I believe, we’d begin to see much more than the alpha male back patting and Wayne would be in his element: a flamboyantly fey (the redundancy is necessary) rich young man. Then he’d have no problem admitting his previously fettered desires for Pop. Incestuous as it may sound, this is indeed the case.

I just think that it’s commendable how as closet homosexuals, facing societal stigma of undisclosed sexuality in our quite backward society (pardon the pun), Wayne and, I’m sure, many rappers have navigated through the disagreeably lubricious music industry. Kudos guys, kudos. Now all that’s left after you realize no one is buying your shtick, is to admit that indeed you prefer ‘money over bitches’, yes, but if you didn’t have to worry about that image of the no-nonsense alpha male you’ve established, you’d prefer to run through a meadow with one of your male paramours. In the case of Lil’ Wayne, Pop would be the man.

Rembrandt

On the contrary, a commercial artist executes work that his art director has directed him to, or if independent, work that his freelance endeavors have yielded for him, work that will eventually appear on billboards, in periodicals and other printed texts and media, on apparel etc. He is guaranteed a sale, and an easy sale at that.

Of course both kinds of artists have that intrinsic drive to create but I think the one that chooses to have job security is smarter than the one who won’t relent to societal, industry and/ or mainstream requests and will therefore starve.

Hunger builds character, yes, but money builds so much more.

Houses, for instance, that you and your extended family can live in.

That’s the difference.

* also posted here

How does one make a case for color, for one specific color? How does one arbitrarily decide that red is better than green or that blue is far superior to orange?

There’re probably some sort of criteria but obviously that’s something I’m not privy to. Of course if the question were, “What color do you, Joe Nyaggah, prefer?” then I’d have an answer for that: Yellow!

Shallowly though, the reason is because the color, a primary color, is very pleasing to the eye. Rothko (As much as I disagree with his artistic sensibilities) suggested that different colors evoke different emotions and the placement of certain colors in proximity to others – as my understanding of the Berlin School’s description of Gestalt theory and effect would lead me to assert – evokes strong, very strong, and complex emotions.

Mark Rothko, 1947

For me, color does more than that and so my favorite color yellow does indeed more than just evoke emotion; it makes me think. It makes me think specifically of it and this is what I think:
Yellow is a unisex color. It’s a very brilliant color that doesn’t exactly denote sex or gender in the way that pink would. It’s not a man’s color nor is it a woman’s color. That I should be comfortable of such chromatic ambiguity doesn’t speak so well of my character – but whatever.
So if the prism of color were a physical expanse of rolling hills or grassy knolls that I could run through, or better yet frolic through, I would end up inexplicably atop the hillock called yellow. How more to justify this is not commensurate with my literary or artistic abilities.

Pushed to the wall, one will say just about anything. So as much as I fulminated against the assignment vowing never to add to the artistic and aesthetic bullshit that’s already in abundance, I ended up doing just that.

Contradiction personified, is what I am.

For the simple fact that if I had magical powers and could effortlessly traverse the dimensions in the space/ time continuum, I would immediately vacate the present and head out to, or more accurately, head back to the renaissance and enjoy the glorious artistic realism; for that reason, I do not appreciate work by such ‘artists’ as Marcel Duchamp. I don’t believe that a urinal, even if crudely signed and exhibited in lauded galleries could ever qualify as art.

Marcel Duchamp

Art is inarguably functionless beauty.

That’s to mean that beauty depicted in the artist’s own way is just for the eye to enjoy and the mind to process. It’s not also for the ass to sit on. As soon as something becomes functional, crossing over from visual stimulus to palpable, usable thing, it ceases to be art/ beauty. For instance, the paintings of the great renaissance masters will never fail to be considered art. Even if artistic sensibilities change with the times (which they have) Mona Lisa will always be the epitome of beauty, granted from another era but definitely still an artistic representation if not personification of beauty.

On the contrary, a chair considered art today, as artistic sensibilities evolve will not always be considered so. At one point in time it will cease to be art and will just be a chair. It will perhaps be a “different looking chair” and antique hunters will most probably appreciate it because it will be rare but ultimately it will just be a chair.

Therefore, a chair is just a chair, not art!