You know what? I’ll give you a pressing political issue in America that needs attention. Cinema.
We have a DA “close to pressing charges” against Harvey Weinstein, Miramax distributor of multiple films by Quentin Tarrantino and Kevin Smith, films which didn’t need a gajillion dollars’ worth of special effects in order to lure viewers. What did he actually do? Does the legal system still even matter? I’ll tell you one thing he did for sure: competed against these cheese-headed comic book and Star Wars movies in the box office, at least up until this AT&T/Time Warner merger, a move which definitely finds some dirty hands sinking into the movie industry.
Now, I’m really baffled about all this appeal over this comic book film Black Panther, the soundtrack of which is being “curated” by Kendrick Lamar and to feature The Weeknd, Schoolboy Q and SZA as well as I guess other black artists who really like comic books… or something. It’s almost as baffling as everybody hating Kanye West, the muse behind “Black Music” which I thought was actually a genuine fist in the air [1] and a unifying rally call for all the people of his color to really get behind. Yes, I have met black people who consider Late Graduation a classic, who profess to being “huge Kanye West fans,” and not all of them had all their teeth in, either.
Maybe rap music just SHOULD be worthless and meaningless in the year 2018, like an aerobic workout for the lungs. Maybe that’s it. Either way, it sure is.
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[1] The fist in the air for anybody who doesn’t know is the symbol of the Black Panther Party movement, an organization which ran in the mid-20th century and devoted itself to arming black citizens and ensuring their basic, equal privileges in America. It was founded in 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton, the man apparently at hand in 2pac’s “Changes” (“It’s time to fight back that’s what Huey said / Two shots in the dark now Huey’s dead”).