well i know i said that whole thing about “Arab Money” being defended as a veiled compliment, but I didn’t know homeboy would really apologize for it…
read this.
then go back and refresh your memory on what i said about what makes it still wack.
apparently Busta was paying homage to Arab culture. Kind of like, if a white guy made a song about fried chicken and collard greens and called it “Nigga Food,” and the chorus was a bastardization of an old slave hymn, he could call a black guy and be like, “no way dude, i’m saying that food is deLICIOUS!”
[thanks to jerry for the article]
4 responses so far ↓
victor // December 10, 2008 at 1:06 am |
i still think that there is a difference between a black person being racist against another marginalized ethnic group with good intentions and a white person being racist against black people with good intentions. — i.e. busta’s intentions (if pulled off in a sloppy, inarticulate and offensive way) are still founded in a sense of opposition to eurocentricity whereas our hypothetical white dude doing “nigga food” for example, has more murky and subjective, hard-to-pin-down intentions that involve a pretty intensely confused understanding his own whiteness (in addition to the obvious confused understanding of blackness).
i just mean to say that while it is flawed, arab money is that it’s attempting to illustrate a non-western brand of financial success. in the same way that elijah muhammed and the black muslims (who are also very often WILDING hella hard) embraced islam not only for its history and rich and developed culture but also because it was in many ways culturally understood as opposite to western values, it was a model of non-western culture that could be revered, especially for a such an alienated diaspora as black americans. and that was what was interesting. what was interesting and admirable about the movement, whereas the cult-like shit, the embezzling, the shady violence, the misogyny, etc. were obviously not really poppin off right.
being united states citizens, we should be no strangers to noble ideals realized in the most horribly wrong way (“all [property-owning (ahem, slave-owning), white, non-female] men are created equal” etc. etc. etc.) so like our task is actually uncovering the good hidden in those words and working towards that…
i personally suspended a little disbelief and just went with busta cause i more or less trusted his intentions (other moments like this mught include hearing nas say: “open every cell in attica, send them to africa”), but obviously an artist needs to be wary about their context and how far is too far and all of that, but at the same time it takes risking going to far to feel out where the line is and to begin to figure out what the line is.
like for a long time dave chapelle defended using the n-word and then later changed his mind. in fact his canceling of his show was due to his change of heart regarding a blackface skit. his show had a lot of sketches i would have found more questionable from another person and i don’t think that’s a double standard, it’s that he has consistently proven to be a critical thinker with a sense of morality and so i trust his artistic decisions.
i’m not sure how comparable busta is per se, but i do appreciate the article about him apologizing and i think the apology had more substance than say, michael richards.
alysonmance // December 10, 2008 at 4:53 am |
damn that was long. but i get what you’re saying.
i think, though, that i should have left out the “white guy” part and just left it with “some guy” making a song about “nigga food”
remember when jennifer lopez had the lyric “i tell them niggas mind they biz, but they don’t hear me, though” and black people everywhere lost their goddamn minds, all, on the news and shit crying about this racist latina that they once loved til she spit the n-word?
my point was that black people take mad liberties on shit like that, saying all kinds out outlandish, ignorant shit and then getting mad at someone else (including those of the minority variety) for doing the same thing, even if it’s an offense of lesser value.
white people excluded for obvious reasons, i’m about equal opportunity racism or shutting the fuck up, ya dig?
the original post i wrote way back was about how a popular figure like bussa bus was gonna get little fools everywhere running around saying “ay-rab” without knowing how offensive so many people find it, thereby proliferating the bullshit.
mainly because as soon as an arab makes a song called “nigga [ANYTHING],” folks is gettin slayed left and right, jesse jackson is writing letters, al sharpton is sweating his perm out, and black people everywhere magically forget the fact that they were just doing the ay-rab money dance in the club the night before.
chappelle tried to make light of this with his Racial Pixies, which was beYOND hysterical, but everyone was flipping out over how incredibly offensive it is. and his point was pretty much like, well, you can laugh at and tivo a sketch called “the niggar family,” but when someone’s making fun of your white, latino, or asian stereotype, all of a sudden he’s taken it too far?
please.
if you can dish it, you should also be able to take it… or just leave it alone.
victor // December 12, 2008 at 3:12 am |
ok well “some guy” instead of “white guy” changes it a bit, as i was just trying to say that there are important distinctions. i wasn’t really trying to qualify them in a hierarchical sense.
like if anyone made a song called “nigga food” the question shouldn’t be about whether or not it should’ve been made because the reality is that it was made. some dude, no matter how confused, no matter what his intentions, really actually thought that “nigga food” would really be the jumpoff for whatever reasons, and it’s those reasons that need to be explored and discussed so that dude doesn’t get surprised next time he acts a fool and everyone flashes on him.
also as a sidenote: remember when fat joe said “nigger i’m that hood” and hella pronounced the r extra hard? no? yeah i guess nobody cares about fat joe. but that was hella weird. that fool is very white-skinned. like basically albino. is it cause he “looks more [morphologically] black” than j-lo? is it because fat joe literally is “that hood?” or is it because nobody cares about fat joe? questions…
Raven // January 17, 2009 at 6:49 pm |
hahaha, exactly!!!! ahahahaha