Jazzey Adeniji
A friend has got in touch with me regarding the ongoing stupidity in the Nigerian public space about MJ and BEY legacy and why I have not weighed in on it.
There is no point joining debate with a group given to self immolation when you have a journey to complete.
A generation that cannot ask politicians for libraries but will kill a human being for money is a lost one.
MJ is irreproducible. BEY is a contemporary phenom that can be reproduced over and over again.
There is only one Transatlantic slave trade which produced Jim Crow laws and Segregation where black people became chattels. Intellectual property, labour and the very lives of black people were not theirs.
In the 60s when MJ burst unto the scene, the black superstars were Motown stars. They were Kings boxed into a corner.
MJ broke that box forever. Forever.
He became the standard for white supremacy. Not even all those rag tag rock and roll, rock balladist, metal rock wonks could keep up with his relentless border breaking, category smashing and culture changing innovative nous.
MJ is worshipped globally.
Made music videos which challenged industry standards. Go and read about the length of the Thriller videos and what they meant.
This is a man who brought in film makers of Hollywood to do music videos.
Many of you did not understand that videos only became an item with the launch of MTV! Before then they meant little.
He went from being the greatest artiste to being the best collectors of the best of white music intellectual property. (Cosby only tried to buy a news Corp and he wound up in jail). MJ bought the catalogue of the Beatles and a few others. Sony Music Corp was begging him to hand it over. When they failed, all the court cases and accusations began. He didn’t sign his own artistic IP away with contracts like all black artistes did before Prince and P Diddy.
He did some of that whilst BEY was still in the loins of her dad. Before she was injected into her mum’s wombs.
BEY is a beneficiary of the paths opened up by the giants that went before – MJ being an integral part of that.
She would be grateful herself, except for these uneducated ‘shildren of anger on soosha media’.
Beware of single story they were told. Anyways the simpletons have no idea of what complexity means.
Music is just a forensic capture of the goings on in historical continuum. You have to go back into the history of the time to contextualise the impact of players.