"She can't sing"..."Such-and-such can sing better than her"..."the only reason she's famous is because her father managed the group"..."she wasn't even the best looking one in Destiny's Child"..."her fans are sheep"..."all she does is shake her booty"..."she's a devil worshipper"..."I heard her breath stinks"..."she's whitewashed and wears European hairstyles"..."she's much older than they're saying that she is"..."she's too sexy"...these are just a few of the most asinine reasons that I've heard for people to dislike Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. It doesn't matter that she's clearly a family-oriented woman who loves her husband of nearly eight years and her four-year-old daughter with all of her heart. It doesn't impress people that her net worth is somewhere between $250 million and $450 million, earning $54.5 million in and being named Forbes magazine's most powerful female musician of 2015. It makes folks no never mind that she has sold over 118 million records worldwide as a solo artist, 60 million records worldwide with Destiny's Child, won 20 Grammy awards and is the most nominated woman since the award's inception. Heck, it doesn't even matter that she just put out what will end up being the most discussed music video and song of 2016, "Formation", let alone have the unmitigated gall to perform it in the Pepsi Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show with a colorful assortment of sistas in all black rocking berets and afros to honor the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party. Some Beyoncé defector out there is still holding on to their baseless beef by the skin of their teeth--a beef that probably has less to do with Beyoncé and more to do with the fact so many like, love, adore and even idolize her as if she's Jesus Christ in Givenchy. However, what I appreciate most about Beyoncé's statement is that she's decreeing the beautifully complicated layers of her Blackness loud and clear while telling anyone who has a problem with that to either fall in line with the much bigger plan of unity and empowerment or build a bridge and get over it. The best way to break down this moment of artistic bravery for an artist of her particular magnitude while exposing a deeper problem within the Black community is through Bey's own lyrics...
"Y'ALL HATERS CORNY WITH THAT ILLUMINATI MESS." Because she and Jay-Z throw up the diamond, it just has to be connected to the "all seeing-eye of Horus"--an "occult" symbol from Egyptian culture. Because she ratcheted up the sex talk on her eponymous 2013 album, words like "filthy", "erotic", "lustful" and "perverse" were attached to her--although her lyrics were clearly aimed at her husband and best friend. Because the stage lighting for her 2014 Grammy performance was blue and Lucifer's color just happens to be blue as well, then Beyoncé had to be putting on a magic show for the ages in the same vain of Babalon. People even go so far as to insert lyrics that aren't even there to make their unfounded arguments, i.e., "INNA bring it right" in lieu of the actual lyric which is "get my brain right". (For the record, INNA is associated with the Indian Goddess Lord Venkateswara, which is in some twisted way supposed to be connected to the Great Beast 666, Aleister Crowley.) The most disappointing part to all of this is that because there are so many people who are not fans of either Jay-Z or Beyoncé, a lot of Black folks treat this "information" as gospel. They conduct no fact checking of their own, but use these accusations as fuel to their raging fires of hatred because no two people should have all this power--especially a Black couple.
However, Jay-Z said it best on "Heaven": "Conspiracy theorists screaming Illuminati/They can't believe this much skill is in the human body." Combine that with one of Beyoncé's opening shots and you have the foundation for this question: so you're telling me that a Black couple have to be worshipping Satan because they make songs about sex with each other, are super-duper famous and are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and you wanna use a bunch of images and symbols to make your point? Okay, player. Meanwhile, the Knowles family's long-time pastor, Reverend Rudy Rasmus of St. John's United Methodist Church in Houston who also married the Carters in 2008, was not shy in coming to her defense in a 2014 interview with theGrio:
Beyoncé is a consummate entertainer, and an entertainer entertains. Is the entertainer’s entertainment an expression of that person’s life and reality? I don’t know. But I know when Arnold Schwarzenegger straps on a 30 caliber cannon and blows planes out of the sky, nobody asks the question, ‘Arnold why are you walking around for those 90 minutes in that suit with that 30 caliber cannon? What kind of person are you?’ I don’t think I’ve heard that question. But at the end of the day, Arnold Schwarzenegger is an entertainer. I think a person has the right to earn a living in the way that they are gifted, and I think that she is tremendously gifted and I think she expresses that gift in some amazing ways. I think the world would be void an extreme talent if we silenced her or censored her. I wouldn’t want my art censored.
Without saying it outright, one can surmise from Reverend Rasmus' statement that there is a lack of criticism of Schwarzenegger's moral character in real life pursuant to the roles he plays on screen because he's a White man versus Beyoncé fully expressing herself as a Black woman. Unless I've been living under a rock the size of California and Texas combined, I have never heard "Illuminati" thrown around about The Terminator. Granted, I'm not so naive as to act like the possibilities of them engaging in occult behavior are completely out of the question. There are always those people who are (as Shawn Jay from Field Mob once stated) "coming to church with a devil tucked in your purse". However, I want us to stop automatically believing some pastor who makes a compelling but largely unproven argument about someone's belief system simply because he's a "man of God", or trusting some ultra-militant conspiracy theorist who gave you a 40-page dissertation of which you probably only read the first two or three pages. Furthermore, I have always been of the belief that the people who throw the most stones live in houses built of tempered glass, i.e., what a person leads a crusade against is often their biggest sin. Bottom line, Black people can do what Jay-Z and Beyoncé have done without sacrificing the soul of the first-born child to do it, so unless you're privy to their prayers and rituals, then please get more "information".
"I LIKE MY BABY HAIR WITH BABY HAIR AND AFROS." Maybe it's the Southeast D.C. in me, but I feel like that combined with my hefty, unshakeable amount of Black pride qualify me to hail from the Wishaninja Woods. Allow me to explain...I have always commended my sister-in-law for the excellent job she does with my nieces' hairstyles. Along with two of their maternal cousins, they have some of the most beautiful heads of hair that I have ever seen on four young girls, and all that their mothers do is twist their hair. However, if somebody went online and said some ignorant, self-hating crap about any one of them that has been said about Blue Ivy Carter, then it would take every bit of the Holy Spirit to keep me from being on my David Banner "let's take this sh** to his mama's house" flow. I mean, really...what kind of community do we live in where it's cool in these streets to ridicule a child on social media because her parents allow her hair to grow out of her scalp in its natural state? Whether it's Blue Ivy supposedly needing a comb through her hair or Gabby Douglas not being able to enjoy her gold medals at the 2012 London Olympics without her functional pony tail being ridiculed, our young girls often can't win within our own community.Once again though, Beyoncé does something to unintentionally offend someone else's Blackness by asserting her Blackness. As much as you can say that Beyoncé's hair is a certain color and style that may be more in line with European culture, you won't dare say that about Blue Ivy. Blue represents a new age of Black girls who will grow up not allowing society to dictate to them what beauty is. Neither can you tell any of them to straighten their hair to be "acceptable", nor can you call their hair "kinky" and expect them to be easily offended. In fact, these girls are already more liberated than many of these "women" who are quick to throw the most classless shade imaginable at four-year-old girls, but are too afraid to let their hair be "nappy" in the public eye--many of whom are supposed to be the "enlightened" ones. Hey, if you can live with putting the same chemicals in your hair or your daughter's hair that can disintegrate a soda can all while it's clear that said chemicals are slowly damaging your scalp and destroying the integrity of your hair follicles, then have at it. If the main reason you wear a weave in your hair is because the man in your life doesn't like women with short hair, then go for it. Meanwhile, Beyoncé's message--which is done without tearing down the many forms of beauty within Black culture--might be cliché, but it reaches to the most spiritual and psychological levels: your Black is beautiful, so don't ever apologize for it.
My black is NOT the black that Beyonce chose to represent in her video. So PLEASE do not treat me as if I enjoy Red Lobster, have hot sauce in my purse or any of the other one dimensional traits she labels as "black culture". It might get you cussed out.Okay, we get it...you're different, yup, you're different. However, this woman was so busy trying to assert her Blackness while belittling Beyoncé's representations of Black culture that she completely missed the point. Beyoncé is not saying that these traits are the only forms of Blackness; she is simply making the point that there's nothing wrong with these aspects of Blackness as some may insinuate. There is no shame in your daughter's hair being in an afro, having a wide set nose, making money while staying true to your roots, taking your significant other to Red Lobster if he or she puts it down or liking collard greens and corn bread. Heck, she even suggests that there's nothing so terrible about twerking if that's part of your Blackness. Furthermore, someone with a meticulously artful eye peeps the significant of that picture above, which is the first moment in the video when she says "I got hot sauce in my bag". Wearing a $950 Victorian-style Zimmermann dress while holding a parasol, she sends a clear message: "I might appear to be fancy and refined, but I still have enough soul tucked away to light this entire room on fire."
Here's another point to consider: while I agree that one size of Blackness does not fit all, that also includes yours, too. Everybody might not look, sound or act like Beyoncé, but not everybody is Ledisi either. Jay-Z might not speak to every Black man's specific plight, but neither does Talib Kweli. However, going out of your way to publicly declare that a particular artist, person, politician, religion or whatever doesn't represent your shade, brand or style of the culture does nothing but divide the culture even more. No, Black isn't just Louisiana Hot Sauce and Cheddar Bay Biscuits, but it isn't being a gluten-free vegan either; it's all of the above because we are a rich and diverse culture with so many layers and levels to our beauty. Just look at Beyoncé's video as proof in the pudding...one minute, she's standing in front of a mansion flipping the bird to her doubters on her all black, Southern Gothic flow with braided pigtails; the next, she's doing parking lot donuts hanging out the window of a '64 Impala in a Fendi fur looking like she just came from the African Hair Braiding salon. No matter what, her point is that neither Black women nor Black people in general are defined or limited by stereotypes, but we transcend those stereotypes by refusing to be ashamed of or easily offended by the many things often associated with who we are.
Of course, because Jay-Z and Beyonce don't hand deliver a press release to every single person in the world when they donate, the anti-BeyHive still won't be satisfied with these efforts simply because they don't hear about them or see it blasted all over the place as much as they see Beyoncé shaking her booty on stage. Thus, I refer to another appropriate Jay quote (since there's always one on deck) from "Blueprint 2":
I put dollars on mine, ask Columbine/When the Twin Towers dropped, I was the first in line/Donating proceeds off of every ticket sold/When I was out on the road, that's how you judge Hov, no?/Ain't I supposed to be absorbed in myself/Every time there's a tragedy, I'm the first one to help/They call me this misogynist, but they don't call me the dude/To take his dollars to give gifts at the projects/These dudes is all politics, depositing checks/They put in their pocket, all you get in return is a lot of lip...There are two things at play when you juxtapose this with Beyoncé's parting gift on "Formation". First, getting "revenge" with your paper runs deeper than styling on some nonentity on Instagram or Facebook, but rather, it makes the statement that one of the best ways to be an effective world changer is to use your resources instead of making some lengthy but toothless soliloquy. You can either contribute to the causes that mean the most to you or, like Martin Luther King, Jr. eloquently stated in his 1968 "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech, withdraw your financial support from the most influential entities connected to the establishment. Second, people within our community need to stop being fake-me-out accountants for these celebrities, especially when the celebrities are often being better stewards with their fortune than what we give them credit for or do better with their money than what we've been given ourselves. I've been in organizations where we've asked members for something as simple as a $25 contribution, but the same people claiming to be too broke to give back are up in the club with bottle service or on social media flaunting pictures of their new Jordans. Meanwhile, they'll be the same people with the most to say about the popular cause of the week or be the first ones there for the photo op. Say what you will, but Jay-Z and Beyoncé are actually getting "revenge" by doing what isn't expected of them. If more of us would "get in formation" and do the same with the little that we do have, then we could get "revenge" by helping to change the lives of those who have been lost in the shuffle of American economics, social justice and politics as usual.
"GET IN FORMATION"...OR "GET INFORMATION"?!?! Perhaps this is the piece de resistance: the conceptually clever and debatably intentional word play. As far as the latter lyrical assertion, I think of what Michael Imhotep, founder of the African History Network and host of The Michael Imhotep Show, always says within the first 15 minutes of his show:What you do for yourself is what you do to yourself, and what you allow other people to do to you is based upon what you think about yourself. What you think about yourself is based upon what you have been taught about yourself. What you've been taught about yourself is based upon everything you've read, heard and seen about yourself. So when you control the radius of a man's thoughts, you can control the circumference of his actions because the mind can't do or teach what it doesn't know.Essentially, we as Black people have been taught so many things about ourselves from so many different people--even by those within our community who have meant well--that many of us are walking around with seemingly-perpetual identity crises. Tying in Imhotep's words of wisdom, my interpretation of phrasing Beyoncé's rallying call as "get information" is that we as individuals and as the Black collective must not only get information about ourselves and our community, but more important, we must also have creative control over the information. We cannot be a people who base our knowledge off of lies, half-truths and misinformation, but we must be a people who seek out primary sources--whether it's about our lineage, our cultural influence, our family heritage or just ourselves in general. Hence, that's why it was important for her to highlight the litany of images and ideas in "Formation" as she has experienced because it's not only her experience, but a shared experience by many in the Black community. Knowing that she would receive backlash--some people are actually boycotting her for her Super Bowl performance--she has controlled the narrative as it pertains to her racial identity, heritage, environment and upbringing, and when you control the narrative, you ultimately control the flow of information going into and out of that narrative.
Now let's connect this with the lyric as written, which really shed lights on the difficulty within the Black community: the ability to unify. Whether it was in the "Formation" video or during the Super Bowl performance, Beyoncé gave a visual presentation of the obvious: we may not all be exactly alike in look, thought, style or approach, but that should never stop us from joining forces and working together in unison for a common purpose. When we are informed about ourselves as individuals and are completely comfortable within our own skin, then neither are we ever offended by what someone else knows and accepts about themselves nor do we feel the need to tear that person down in order to feel better about ourselves or elevate someone else who we deem as more worthy. We have to come to the point where every last member of the Black community is included in the revolution, meaning that the sista with dreads must be seen as equally valuable to the fight as the sista with the premium Yaki or the brotha of affluence must be worth as much as the brotha from the projects. There is no more room for the "jigaboos" vs. "wannabees" mentality or any form of "us" vs. "them" within our own community when there are so many outside forces seeking to steal, kill and destroy us. It has to be us, meaning all of us, or we don't win at all, i.e., "slay, trick, or you get eliminated". Whether it's more along the lines of Beyoncé's female empowerment platform or you broaden it to include all Black people, the message is that you have to "slay" with your specific gift and be a team player or you run the risk of being a casualty of war. So it's not as much of a question of whether the intent is "get in formation" or "get information"; to succeed as a vibrant and thriving culture, it has to be both.
I want to be perfectly clear about something: despite my glowing support, I am not a member of the BeyHive. Truth be told, Beyoncé was on a list for years with the likes of Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Brian McKnight of singers whose music should've been on a playlist called "Songs to Play When Considering Suicide Because of the Monotony of Life". However, I have always believed that she is one of most talented singers, artists and performers of the modern era. You will be hard-pressed to find another artist that works as hard as she does to be as good as she is year after year. In a society where so many of us celebrate the shady section of our population quick to holler out "f*** your feelings", I have always recognized and respected the kindness in her spirit--which is why no one can convince me that she subscribes to the Aleister Crowley school of thought or whatever that entails unless she came out and said it herself. More important, I am extremely elated that one of the biggest superstars in music history is using her art and her platform to speak out against injustice and speak up for the voiceless--much of which has been said without saying one word--and she's doing it her way. Choosing to make such a bold move as performing "Formation" during the biggest halftime show in all of sports, this woman risked not only losing some of her fan base or increasing the amount of vitriol aimed in her direction, but also a potential hit to her pockets. Nevertheless, she has made a conscious decision to not only be herself in her own Blackness while standing up for everything and everyone Black, but to essentially challenge each one of us to do all of the above. In every aspect of our identity as individuals and as part of a bigger culture, Beyoncé has made it as simple as this: we gon' slay...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please feel free to enthusiastically chime in or RESPECTFULLY disagree.