XR presents Doomberg Report
END TIMES CULTURE INDEX MAY 2024
MEET THE COMBS
Diddy done done. The horror show video from 2016 of Sean Combs crashing out and beating on then girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, confirmed what many of us already knew. The man who kept changing his name but not his ways (from Puff Daddy to Puff to Diddy and finally settling on the subterfuge of Brother Love) was capable of monstrous acts. This was Portrait of Dorian Gray type shit. The collapse of his gravity-defying brand and his persona as the gifted pro-black impresario with the platinum ear — already in free fall since Cassie threatened to sue him for the heinous treatment she endured — came to its ugly completion the moment this footage was leaked.
At his height, Diddy was a consummate hitmaker, strip mining the 70s and 80s for samples that propelled some of Rap’s greatest lyricists and R+B’s most beloved voices onto the center stage of American pop culture. He was not just a visionary mogul, he was a salesman par excellence. Outside of his ability to command the American stage and stand next to the hottest thing going, he knew how to close. In fact, we submit that the quintessential Diddy moment was not him dancing as the “1” in his someone else’s music video, or even closing a deal and claiming loudly savage status (although that is close) but his appearance on the Home Shopping Network where he spit a non-stop pitch to housewives across America, with such oily swagger, he sold out of his King fragrance in a matter of fifteen minutes and left the blonde host breathless with admiration at his salemanship. He would subsequently transfer these skills to Ciroq where he transformed a no-name also ran vodka into a household name.
Prior to the leak, Diddy was already denying allegations from several more lawsuits with a few highly stylized attempts at painting his accusers as shakedown artists. He created a short film in which a voiceover spoke of being calm in the storm while the visuals depict beautiful interior decoration in slow motion and him in deep prayer with his family. There was also a strange and soul less diss track by his mini me, King Combs, the definition of a nepo baby. On “Pick A Side” he postures as a quasi-gangster, and goes after 50, who has been a perpetual online thorn in Diddy’s side, and — get this — the FEDERAL fucking GOVERNMENT. It should surprise no one that 50 continued his relentless trolling and two days later the incriminating tape found its way to CNN.
Amid the fallout, a deflated and defeated Sean Combs went on social media to apologize. In a desperate attempt to provide a counter narrative, he prefaced it with an image of him holding his newest baby girl. Then he faced the camera and spoke some words. His heart pumps PR. His ever calculating mind did the math and reached for the big three words that might evoke a second chance: therapy, rehab and church. He reports that he at his worst then and asked God for his Grace. He said he made no excuses and wasn’t asking for forgiveness while seeming to do both. He said sorry to no one in particular. As disingenuous as it came off, it was also revelatory. It reminds us of that devastating scene in the Sopranos when Dr. Melfi came to the humiliating realization at a dinner table full of her professional peers that her long time mafia boss client, Tony Soprano, was using their therapy sessions not to heal but to become a more effective criminal sociopath. Of the four horsemen of hiphop’s most epic tale of the 90s, Diddy was the last one left. Tupac and Biggie were murdered. Suge sits in prison. Puff, despite his excesses, seemed to escape the era without sanction. Until now. The damage to the brand seems irreparable but with Brother Love who knows? What we can almost be almost certain about is that the gospel album is on its way. Take that, take that, take that burden oh, Lord Jesus. *Begins to praise dance.*
POETIC JUSTICE
It still feels like something out of a script. Black Jesus dethrones the Lightskin Lucifer hoarding all of hiphop’s gold. Is it nature or nurture that it all lines up so neatly with mythic construction? They met on tracks like Poetic Justice and Buried Alive until in a crescendo of lyrical fireworks they clash in the Streaming with one defeating the other in a devastating display of tactical, strategic and yes, poetic superiority. It was a masterclass of metaphor murder, venomous rhyme, the architecture of doom.
Like Jay Z vs Nas, the last major battle of this scale (not counting the ongoing Nicki-Cardi conflict which is like hiphop’s own little Israel-Gaza) the “conscious rapper” was able to gain the high ground and control the Culture vs Commerce narrative. Both Nas and Kendrick did the needy and gave their diehards the war chants required to bumrush the more popular opps and put the other side’s armies on their heels. In this case, it was a carefully constructed war plan that seemed to catch the Boy Drizzy unawares. Before Drake knew it, he was surrounded on all sides by a multiplicity of Kendrick incarnations. Poet Kendrick, Ruthless Kendrick, Pulitzer Kendrick, Numerology Kendrick, Petty Kendrick, Kung fu Kendrick, Israelite Kendrick and Poppa Kendrick. These duplicates ultimately buried Drake alive alongside allies like Ross and Metro and Ye and Future. Surprisingly, Megan thee Stallion actually laid much of the blueprint. Some of the sharpest critiques against Drake came from her early bars. The rest was crowd sourced and cherry picked from the other authors of Drake’s demise namely Ye and Pusha T. It was, as Drake cleverly put it, a 20 v 1, but the lion’s share of this beatdown came from the multiplicity of a Gemini mind.
Kendrick plotted a complete dismantling and was not going to leave it to the judges. “Euphoria” laid meticulous groundwork, “6:16 in LA” rocked him, “Meet the Grahams” dripped with sinister intent and muffled Drake’s counter and “Not Like Us” was a funkadelic bomb, wrapped in West Coast flavored contempt. Full of earworms, one listen forced us to repeat it — wop, wop, wop, wop, wop —for weeks. It was the bookend to “Euphoria” which also had a number of lines that found its way in one’s playlist of internal outbursts. What is it? The braids? or Let me see you Push a Teee or the most destructive line of the battle: It’s not just me, I’m what the culture’s feeling. Metro crowd-sourced further insult to injury with “BBL Drizzy”, an extremely catchy disstrumental made from an AI sample, truly a first. Both “Not Like Us” and “BBL Drizzy” have become global phenomena inspiring suburban white women to Crip walk and crowds to chant O-V-Ho! and Freaky Ass Nigga And hold the r in minor as they collectively accuse Drake of heinous behavior. This is Step in the name of Hate.
For hiphop as a whole, it was a return to substance, literary devices and quintuple entendres, even if many of those entendres were internet reaches. For the entire stretch of the battle we were free of twerking, drill murders and mumbling satanism. We are also seeing a return of high quality bars and releases by skilled artists like Rapsody, Mach-Hommy, Pete Rock and Common, Nas and the like.
At the core of the conflict was real animosity. Kendrick’s central conceit was Drake is a pervy, corrupt sham who abuses the grace offered to him by real creatives. He steals creative energy, cosplays and manipulates and could never wear the crown because he don’t represent the Culture. Drake’s response? I’m the monster you made me. More or less. For his unprecedented 15 year run, he’s played the game and has progressively gotten darker in his subject matter. Friends have become enemies. Idols became rivals. His time in the industry is marked by betrayal, ingratitude, conflict and a constant undermining and rejection for things that he could not control. So this is Drake in his villain era. This is what it means to be so insanely successful that you become the ire of the rest of the males in the pack, competing for the women’s attentions.
Don’t get it twisted. Drake is a formidable adversary and artist. His timestamp series is impressive rapper shit. His instincts and versatility, ghost writers or not, kept him on the charts for more than a decade. His machine is a behemoth. Yet he called for this. So was it hubris or the appropriate daring to challenge Kendrick? “Family Matters” his supposed red button came with a video in which he orchestrated the demolition of the good kid, m.a.d.d city van. On a driving trio of beats he showed stunning sword technique, no Diddy. Who’s next on the list?/Which one of my so-called niggas Need a shell from the clip?/Always knew I had to smoke y’all niggas/good kid, m.A.A.d city van/we’llpop the latch and let the door slide/tears running’ down my cheek/laughin’ at you pussies dyin’, it’s a war cry. He was fully aware of the coming ambush. He mentioned it on “Churchhill Downs”. On “4AM in Callabas”. He knew it would be Big As the Superbowl. So how did he miss painting Kendrick as a Hotep Keebler Elf with a god complex? How on Earth did Kendrick come up with a club banger before he did — the man of a thousand hits? Mr. Back to Back himself? How did he allow it?
He was drunk with his own power and was surprised when Kendrick collapsed the trap on him. His final effort in this battle “The Heart, Part 6” was giving last reel of the film when the antagonist reaches for his weapon of mass destruction and it no longer works.
Kendrick turned all of Drake’s strengths into weakness. The home he built, the so-called Embassy, to show his stature became the cover art for “Not Like Us”. His ladies man persona became signs of his perversion. The women who were his base of support became his vulnerability. His style jumping and ability to predict the next wave in the culture became evidence of his exploitation. His racial ambiguity that allowed him to be in most rooms and appeal to any audience turned into the chink in his armor. We don’t want to hear you say nigga no morrre.
He constantly forced Drake to eat his words. Drake didn’t just eat crow, he ate owl. Drop and gimme 50 turned into a barrage of scathing diss tracks. The titles of Euphoria and 6:16 in LA were the quintuple entendres Drake said he better come with on “Taylormade Freestyle”. His other taunts about Kendrick being the West Coast turned into a DJ Mustard bop that may inspire a West Coast resurrection. In a backhanded kind of way, the thoroughness to which Kendrick destroyed Drizzy speaks to his status in the game. Master manipulator, Still, he came up lacking. Kendrick saw him coming. His next move has to be his best move and so far he seems to testing the waters: he rapped over “BBL Drizzy” on Sexyy Red’s new single and he remixed a Toronto groups patois light single. Both evoked a collective sigh.
The only distasteful aspect of this masterful display of gifted men partaking in the ancient art of poetic warfare is the casuals doing too much. We are watching the gentrification of this rather Quantum Black moment in real time. The Biden camp has already used “Euphoria” in a campaign add and “Not Like Us” applies to any conflict anywhere. I do look forward to the marching bands taking up that trombone intro but hopefully the obvious corniness of trying to reapply this energy to some corporate purpose will suppress the tryhards and gentrifiers.
GALA OR BLOCK PARTY?
This year’s Met Gala theme, The Garden of Time, based on a short story in which a mob is coming to destroy this delicate garden of aristocratic leisure was a bit on the nose. Protesters were outside the museum screaming about Palestine while the glam rituals continued as scheduled. But when social media star Hayley Baylee dressed as Maria Antoinette and got on her tiktok to giggle “Let them eat cake” like people are not struggling in the grocery store, the digital pitchforks came out. Digital activists organized a block party and celebrities who have not spoken up began to lose millions of followers. Some even went further, filling their online shopping carts to confuse the algorithms. The contrasting opulence with the digital barbarians at the door made for more 2024 theatrics. One almost felt bad for the new starlets like Tyla, Anok and Angel Reese who were only now finding their seats inside what appears to be a burning house. Or are they the presence that might save celebrity itself? The Post-Kanye Kim and the Kardashian empire seems in free fall. Perhaps next year, the exhibition will be even more direct: instead of Sleeping Beauties (which refer to the dresses so delicate they cannot even be hung) maybe large scale Sebastian Salgado images of Rubble Babies and instead of a green carpet symbolic of The Garden of Time we go back to a blood red carpet representing the Bombing of Rafah.
THE CAM’RON CNN DEBACLE
Cam’ron’s contempt for legacy media is a known quantity and the producer who booked him on Abby Phillip’s’s show needs an ass whooping. It was a lazy move, especially since Cam was never really a Puffy associate. But unlike those overly concerned with the white gaze and what he may or may not have done for Black people’s progress, we find his disregard for those concerns refreshing. Cam saw them coming. They wanted him to condemn Diddy and he used the moment to promote his sex juice Power Horse instead. There is some rare richness here. If they wanted a Puffy condemnation Talib Kweli was probably available. But we also applaud Cardi B and Glorilla who were both cornered by media and asked to endorse the Dems but managed to avoid endorsing a political candidate who has shown little regard for us beyond political expedience. It is gonna take more than a phone call or a White House tour with Panderella for our support and for our vote. Yesterday’s price is NOT today’s price.
BULLET FRAGMENTS
Let’s be real, we will never get back the catsuit, Crip walking Serena.
Kelly Rowland having to check these Karens on the Cannes red carpet is a reminder that our most cherished icons still must deal with the goofys with gall.
The secret to her success is the fact that Sexyy Red has a doppleganger in every hood across the US.
Game’s quickly forgotten track should be called Read the Room. YG should have also reconsidered.
ROTATIONS
Not Like Us - Kendrick Lamar
Euphoria - Kendrick Lamar
Family Matters - Drake
Auditoriums - Mos Def
Churchhill Downs - Jack Harlow f/Drake
Never Enough - Rapsody
Wise Up - Pete Rock, Common
Sonje - Mach-Hommy
Ringing - Freeway featuring Jadakiss