XR presents Doomberg Report
END TIMES CULTURE INDEX JUNE 2024 PART 2
OUR NEVER-ENDING DIASPORA WARS
The Tyla controversy is just the latest front in the ongoing clusterfuck that is the online Diaspora Wars. This time the racially ambiguous South African got caught between a rock — her handlers’ misreading of the room — and the hard place that is the current mood of Black America. This latest lightskin fracas started with Tyla’s Breakfast Club interview in which Charlemagne the God asked her about the controversy surrounding her identifying as “colored”, a racial homograph that evokes both South Africa’s and America’s racist history. Her reluctance to answer and then her subsequent press release triggered Tiktok rage. Unhinged posts and think pieces demanding she go back to Africa, full of culture vulture accusations and vitriol of the “I just don’t like the bitch” variety proliferated online. She and her team, once again, found themselves in the chasm between Black America’s construction of race (and the antiquated nomenclature that goes with it) and South Africa’s equally distorted version.
This got the survivors of apartheid and Jim Crow bickering back and forth with accusations of cosplaying, cultural illiteracy and ignorance. It was a kind of trauma bonding from the top one and two populations on the diaspora’s most damaged charts. Imagine the double Spiderman meme arguing over racial classification. Folk were counting Tyla’s DNA strands to establish her right to roll her hips to lightweight Amapiano songs on American soil. Meanwhile the white girls on Tiktok are going viral copping the dance moves from her stage show UNMOLESTED and cashing rather large fucking checks.
This is just one of the ongoing kerosene fires that have exploded on socials in concert with the emergence of the FBA, the Foundational Black Americans movement and the ADOS, American Descendants of Slavery. Both digital mobs give voice to the frustration of Black Americans who wonder why, after centuries of toil, innovation and struggle, Black Americans still haven’t received their just due in political, economic and cultural terms. This is highly justified. Any cursory dive into history will reveal a sustained campaign to remove Black Americans from the books — history, accounting, housing, record, cook — any books.
Uncovering the mountain of lies that have been built to erase the survivors of chattel slavery and their descendants and downplay their contributions to society is full time work. An unfortunate result of this injustice is a distrust of any and all other folk, which includes former allies from the islands and the continent. Any perceived disrespect of encroachment on what might be deemed Black American cultural real estate is immediately and repeatedly called out by a hyper-vigilant horde — lets call them the NNNWA, the National Nigga Neighborhood Watch Association — who got their keyboards and ring lights locked and loaded, ever ready to pounce.
Enter the loquacious ex-pimp Tariq Nasheed and the smart but irritable Yvette Carnell pandering to legit trauma. They’ve gathered small legions of cut-and-paste activists organized around weaponized words and phrases. Strangely, the digital mobs have taken their focus off the system of white supremacist oppression and turned their ire upon Black immigrants from the Caribbean and the continent. They accuse the immigrants of cosplaying black and taking resources and opportunities from the people who struggled to mak those resources and opportunities available. This has led to the weaponizing of the term “Tethers” a slur grafted from the Jordan Peele horror flick Us.
Tariq, a gifted marketer and provocateur, released a number of documentaries that dig around in Black America’s psychic wounds. The Hidden Colors series and his documentary on Buck Breaking present a bespoke version of history custom fit to address Black frustrations and low self esteem. His most recent Microphone Check paints Jamaicans and Puerto Ricans as usurpers of hiphop’s creation myth. Trumped up charges, at best. Real Black New Yorkers from that era recognize this as clout chasing revisionism even while giving light to some of the disregarded pioneers of the hiphop like DJ Flowers and Disco King Mario. This has given a lot casuals, bots and malcontents something to run with. The itch that such content scratches is ever present.
It doesn’t bode well for an short term reversal of this kind of digital tribalism. A medium built on 0s and 1s fosters division. The agents to push such division are legion. AI assisted revisionist history is here to stay - especially from the likes of Nasheed, a provincial pimp with a grifter’s instinct. What’s abundantly clear is that we are dealing with a mental virus more dangerous than COVID.
Long term however, there may be hope. Black America’s recent cultural history suggests this is part of a process toward a greater unity. Hiphop found a greater consensus after the tragedies of the regional wars of the late 90s. A national hiphop aesthetic emerged once the tribal conflicts settled and rappers began to come into alignment. It wasn’t long before New York started to concede to the west and the south and the midwest marched up the charts with everyone else. This is happening globally. Despite the backlash, Tyla cleaned up at the BET awards and had the kind of performance we wanted to see from Burna at the Grammys. ( See “Burna Burning Out”). Pop Smoke brought British Drill to Brooklyn. The current King of Dance and R+B, Chris Brown, is fluent in Afrobeats. Artists like Davido, Rema, Burna and Wiz have already smashed through to the western pop charts. Tems sits alongside SZA as the voice of young women. Lil Baby may just mount a mini-comeback by connecting with British rapper, Central Cee. Tremulous gatekeeping aside, there is momentum toward greater cross-pollination. The tremendous success of the first Black Panther was a direct result of realizing a Global African ethos, even if the plot drew from the diaspora wars. The question for all of us in the Greater Africana is whether we want to stop the squabbling and be part of the dominant global majority or stay a local (exploited) minority? The connective tissue that binds us is far greater than the petty skirmishes that divide us. Rather than fighting over the ownership of intangible histories, we should be collectively cashing in on the bull run in the Tiktok dance market, which is like semiconductors for Black folk. The cultural seed ultimately turns into the political reality. We should be building an OPEC for Black Cultural Product, a Global Black cryptocurrency, and a Black Olympics. Then all this fission online might turn into the fusion for the revolution that won’t be tweeted, tiktokked or televised.
TWERK FATIGUE
The dismantling of Drake may be an indicator of a larger cultural shift. The EBT Awards line up suggests we are reaching Peak Twerk. One after the other, the women ruling hiphop — Sexyy Red, Meagan Thee Stallion, Glorilla, Latto and Ice Spice — came to shake that ass over their mostly disposable chant along anthems. As the night wore on, it became harder and harder to differentiate between performances. They all seem to be wearing the same underwear. The sense that the Machine was serving us fast food was impossible to ignore. Corporate sponsorship was everywhere. The loud but chemical smell of McDonald’s french fries was in the air. Outside of perhaps Victoria Monet, Shaboozey, Teyana Taylor, the early part of the show was not a display of our better angels.
The blacklash has been building for weeks now. A video of a woman complaining about the agenda that promotes Sexxy Red went viral. It was disclosed that Sexyy Red was managed by white men. Ice Spice, who’s marketing and media moves have been flawless up to now, seems to have lost her footing now that the higher ups, excited by her friendship with Taylor Swift, smell money and have put their beaks in her business. Her album cover features her near trash cans emblazoned with the title of her album. Both Megan and Sexyy have had to cancel dates due to flagging sales. Cardi has pushed her sophomore album back indefinitely and offered yet another feature and more great gowns, beautiful gowns.
This is hiphop’s corrective DNA at work. The excesses of the Twerk era have given birth to a return to substance. We are suddenly inundated with music from lyricists like Rapsody, Mach Hommy, Common and LL produced by veterans like Pete Rock and Q-Tip. Even the award show ended with the mother son act of Ms Lauryn Hill and YG Marley building on his grandfather’s legacy with yet another vibey banger, inspired and fully clothed. 2024 is shaping up to be the 50th anniversary we didn’t get last year.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD: RUTO VS KENYA’S GEN Z
President William Ruto of Kenya faces an existential threat from the young people who now stand firmly against his leadership. Activists charge him with being a pliant servant to globalist overlords and in last few months, he did little to disprove these accusations. He dined with the Bidens at a lavish state dinner. He made deals with European nations to guarantee Kenyan jobs in countries like Germany and France despite a rising unemployment rate at home. Fueling more suspicion, Ruto, at the behest of a US-backed intervention, deployed Kenyan forces to police Haiti, which has been without a functioning government since its last president was assassinated by mercenaries in his bedroom.
But the final straw came when Ruto attempted to pass a Finance Bill that promised to tax the Kenyan people — sometimes as much as 36% — on every day items and activities to service an IMF loan that seemed to only benefit the elite. Gen Z wasn’t having it. They got active. Kenyan youth started to organize online, citing lavish spending by the administration and widespread corruption, finally taking to the streeta when the New Tax Bill came to a vote. Law Enforcement were characteristically heavy-handed but the angry crowds grew. The signs were full of snark and read “How You Gonna Teargas a Baddie” and “RUTO IMF PUPPET”. Waves of protests formed finally crashing into the Parliament itself. Government buildings burned, black smoke filled the air, mixing with tear gas and the smell of blood racing toward street drains. The police shot directly into crowds, killing many dozens but failing to intimidate the mostly young, angry protestors. Dozens have been killed by police. Ruto has been forced to stand down: not only scrapping the new taxes, but firing his entire cabinet as well. It may be too late. The violence, death and loss of faith in the government may be too much to overcome. The protesters continue to demand he step down. Along with the seismic shifts in the Sahel region, Gen Z has emerged as a restless force to be reckoned with. Leadership across the continent might do well to take note.
BULLETS
//A recent post about fried pound cake was a cogent reminder that the most dangerous place in America is the negro plate.//With the release of their new Aunt Tea Podcast featuring Rick Ross’s foul mouth BM Tia Kemp, the problematic mother of Angela White fka Black China, Tokyo Toni, and the mother of pimpish rapper Blueface, Karlissa Saffold Harvey, the Zeus Network, which built an empire of trifling toxicity, is trying to corner the market on Black insanity. The only reckless schizophrenic missing is Jaguar Wright but including her might break some anti-trust law. No one company should monopolize all the crazy.//A judge ruled the lawsuit brought by (the late) Steely and Clevie, the dancehall producers of “The Fish Market” riddim, against the entire Reggaeton catalog, can go forward. The lawsuit consolidates a copyright infringement claim against massive artists like Bad Bunny and J Balvin for their use of the “Dem Bow” instrumentation from Shabba Ranks’ 1989 dancehall record, which is the rhythmic father of almost every hit from the genre. A victory in this matter would mean tens of millions in restitution.//
The Tyla and Drake battles are the opening salvos of a war over the very concept of authenticity. Technology and a smaller globe has brought us to a place where all of our racial assumptions and language are antiquated. New terms and descriptions and whole ways of thinking have to be introduced to accurately describe our new realities.
What is our way forward the tola's and the drakes etc ? Ezra 9