Finally, A Black Man Analyzes the Kanye/50 Day.

This cover is so zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Or.

Is it an example of the hype machine doing its job?
When I first saw it, I was like this shit is sooooo Vibe '94.
"Black male Violence/Anger/" as magazine cover fodder. LAME.

I tried reading Everything But the Burden. But it was just so f*cking academic. One of the reasons why I like my blog is that it forces to me convey my point in a way that I would find accessible as a casual reader, no matter how convoluted, academic or rhetorical it may be.
That being said, imagine HOW DELIGHTED I was to see that
Greg Tate got something bubbling at the VOICE on Kanye/50 '07.

Old boy is an academic, a veteran writer, a rocker and a BLACK man.

That makes for interesting perspective on music and American culture.

Sidebar. In an reading this piece, I realized how INFLUENCED I AM
by his writing.

The blending of analysis black masculinity, capitalism and election
year politics. Delish.

Sky's the limit right.

Here are the highlights.
50/Kanye Fill a Black Male Vacuum

Hiphop, still the voice of Young Black America, is only going to get louder and prouder as it goes along, if only because that demographic's voice is so hushed elsewhere. Barack Obama's campaign manager claims his candidate's currently muted campaign voice is the product of his belief that America isn't ready for a fire-breathing Black man, and our nation's prisons and graveyards are full of the proof. But nature abhorring a vacuum, Kanye and 50 have rushed in to fill the void in that last safe space left for such characters.

The Difference Between 50/Kanye

Mr. West and Mr. Cent share in being two of the most unrepentantly obnoxious figures to arrive in American pop culture since Cheney and Rumsfeld. The difference between them being, Mr. West is loud, bratty, obnoxious, but seemingly harmless, while Mr. Cent is laconic, bratty, obnoxious, but genuinely sinister.

Music is the Only Industry that N*ggas Got?

African-American entertainment is our De Beers, our Nokia, our Lockheed—the only bloodsucking industry we (sorta) (symbolically, at least) got, and likely the only nation-state (figuratively, at least) we'll ever have as well. Meaning that in some perverse Black Nationalist way, you have to admire the loot Mr. Cent, Mr. Combs, Mr. Simmons, and Mr. Carter have hustled out of corporate America by wearing little more than their well-hyped shadows. Meanwhile, back in the real jungle, real Africans—Rwandans, no less—are slaughtering one another to corner the market on the colombite-tantalite-laced mud (known as coltan) that keeps your cell phone ringing.

THIS N*GGA MENTIONED COLTAN AND PUFFY IN THE
SAME PARAGRAPH. I HAVE BEEEEEEEEEN MEANING TO WRITE
ABOUT coltan. ***Beings to hyperventilate a little and day dreams un poquito
about Greg.

Yeye Begs for Sympathy Coochie

What he lacks in ferocious flow, he makes up for in plaintive verbal harassment—he's kinda like the guy who will beg his way into your panties if he has to, the one who will simply not shut up or back off until your ears give him the equivalent of sympathy punnani.

**DEAD**.

Dude. Them sympathy coochie n*ggas are annoying as sh*t.

Jay Has the One Thing That Can't Be Bought, Unaldultered Hood Love.

...if there's anything Kanye and 50 both want and will never, ever have, it's the genuine Vito Corleone–Muhammad Ali love and respect Mr. Shawn Carter has out here on these streets, a love I never truly appreciated until around December 4 of last year, when I was on Harlem's 145th Street A-train platform and overheard a young sister, about 17 or so, tell her homegirl she was on her way home to bake a birthday cake, like she always did for her "big brother" Jayhova. Both these guys could give away every dime they make from now until perdition to homeless orphans and not get that kind of unabashed 'hood love in return. Of all the things Mr. Carter has that other high-rolling hiphop brothers might covet, the thing they covet the most can't be bought or sold: his "big man on campus" affability. In recognition of this lack, Mr. West and Mr. Cent take an opposite tack, seeing how far they can push straight-faced arrogance as an icebreaker, if not a virtue.

Um. 50 gets love in the hood. BUT there is something to be said for the nature and extent of the BESOS that Jay gets from Dudes and Ladies alike. Isn't that the swag that had dudes and ladies feeling Pac & Big as well?

Oh.

And Breihan gets Graduation right:

And what comes out is a disconnected parade of images, delivered in an awe-choked hush: "A idol in my eyes, god of the game / Heart of the city, Roc-A-Fella chain / Never be the same, never be another / Number-one Young Hov, also my big brother." It's the lyrical equivalent of Kanye cutting out magazine pictures of Jay and glue-sticking them to the front of his Trapper Keeper. "Big Brother" is my favorite song on Graduation by far; by taking the focus off Kanye and putting it on someone who Kanye wants to emulate but knows he can never equal, it humanizes all the shit-talking that came before it. And this one moment near the end where Kanye just lets loose with this iconic stuff humanizes all the shit-talk that came before it on this song.

Instincts. I trust. mine.

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I like it when the Voice reminds me why I have been
reading it every since I discovered in Delauers....along with The Source.

Read anything good lateley?

You thing Greg is on point?


Have you heard the 50 album yet?<<<<===dates self by calling it an album.

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