The curious case of little Wayne.
Art, the thing that we all love; the thing that makes us imagine that, which is not; the thing that provokes thinking, and most importantly, the thing that makes us feel emotions we never though we were capable of feeling.
Art, the epitome of human intelligence.
But these days art is in trouble. Yes, the very art that we, as human beings have grown to love, is under siege by a growing mentality among us consumers (those of us who supposedly “love” art). A mentality so toxic, that it’s killing artists, ruining careers and most tragically discouraging creativity; the same creativity which is the essence of mankind, the foundation of everything beautiful.
So, the big question at the moment is:
What is killing art? Who is killing art? And why should I care?
Now, I could explain everything as a long monologue (as they prolly do in school lol) but, I think I would be more engaging if you find the answers to these questions yourself ; ) I’ll just show you the way.
I present you: The curious case of little Wayne.
Meet Lil Wayne (or for those of you who are not familiar with rap music: “little Wayne”, yes, I’m talking to you grandma). He is one of the OG mcs of all time (OG: Original Gangster aka a term used to show a sign of respect in the hiphop community / mc: mic controller; basically a slang for a “rapper”) Don’t you dare question my pop culture knowledge ; )
So, this is Lil Wayne. He is an american rapper and I started to listen to his music since I was 12 years old (I got all my music from my brother’s phone back then, along with a wholesome amount of good quality porn lol). He is considered as a GOAT (GOAT: Greatest of all time) by a lot of people in the community; the rap community which I consider myself a part of even tho I have never been to America, nor is my native language English lol. Talk about faking to be a part of a foreign culture lol; but it’s a topic for another day. PS: I live on the internet ; )
And this is what he looks like:
So, what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you look at this picture? A nice, polite, respectable gentleman, who has a decent office job?
Nah prolly not lol.
The picture may however, project an image of a hip, “I don’t give a fuck” type of person, who likes to do drugs, isn’t very smart and has tattoos all over his face.
And I don’t blame you for this; and…. you are kinda right to be honest. Wayne, does talk about doing drugs in his music, he has a very “idgaf” attitude, and he does have tattoos all over your his body (as if it’s wan’t apartment already lol). But that doesn’t mean that he can’t be respectable, polite, soft spoken and emotional at the same time, does it?
It doesn’t, and a part of him is polite, soft spoken and emotional. And he is very intelligent, in fact he’s a creative genius! But appearance rules the narrative in the world we live in right? Specially in this age of the internet, the color of your skin, the way you look, the way you dress and the language you speak determines the things you do. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is killing art and creativity these days.
This is a song by Lil Wayne called, “How to love?” Watch it if you have time; it’s beautiful.
In this song, he talks about the life story of a young girl, who grew up in an abusive household. She was molested at a young age, and had self esteem issues. Later, she made a lot of bad decisions (presumably because of her messed up childhood) and ended up having to strip to make ends meet. Then stripping escalated to prostitution, and she did it. At the end, she got diagnosed with HIV, and she runs out of the hospital crying, reevaluating her life decisions.
In the song, Wayne talks about how she never learnt “How to love” in her life, because she was never truly loved by anyone. Ever since she was a little girl, people used her, abused her, molested her, she never had a strong mother figure in life who she could look up to, and so, she never learnt how to actually love herself. And did all those horrible things to herself which made her end up in such a sad situation.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
It’s such an emotional song; it touches your heart. Now, tell me if that was not polite, beautiful or emotional ? But looking at Wayne, you would not guess he could be capable of producing this piece of art. But he is. And he did.
But I wouldn’t blame you for making those assumptions about him, because listen to some of his other songs.
This song also by Lil Wayne and it’s called, “Lolipop”.
So yeah, there is nothing much to talk about here lol. He talks his usual stuff, that he has a lot of money, multiple women want to lick his “Lolipop” (that was funny as hell lol) and well, how he is the best. It’s very explicit.The general theme of these songs are basically, materialism, sex, and violence.
Exactly as you would expect from someone like Wayne. Right?
But that, is the problem.
Yes, Lil Wayne does make that kind of music you would expect him to make. The kind of “dirty rap music” as some of the more “progressive” people like to call it. BUT he can also make beautiful art that can make you feel emotions you had never felt. But, as I told earlier, most people only see the “dirty, aggressive” part of Wayne and what’s worse, they expect him to make that kind of music.
That way, his own fans literally suffocate his creativity, and put him in a “box”, where he can only make the type of music people normally expect him to make. We, as fans, literally kill his, “soft spoken and emotional” side just because of our expectations of him. That way, he becomes more and more one dimensional, he doesn’t get to experiment with his music and the spark of creativity slowly fades away. So then we only get songs which scream, “Bitches, money and drugs!”, which is a shame. And his meaningful songs like, “How to love” and “Mirrors”, get lost into the oblivion.
And so the art dies.
It’s honestly one of the saddest things of I’ve seen in life.
And moreover, in this age of the internet, it’s easier than ever to “share” your opinions online. Which means, it’s easier than ever for fans to publicly shame an artist if he or she, doesn’t produce music the kind of music they expect them to make. It’s so toxic that, a lot of artist never experiment with new forms of music, they never fully express themselves and honestly, their music gradually becomes repetitive and boring. There is no innovation, and so they slowing fade away with time.
And the alarming thing is, Lil Wayne is not an exception (in fact he is old now, and is close to retiring), there are many other young and emerging artist who have fallen victim to this issue. Young and emerging aristis like Kyle, Joji, Rich brian, and Lil Yatchy to name a few.
And the thing is,
It is detrimental for the state of art and creativity.
And well, what’s more, those artist who have a long and prosperous career; for example the GOAT dizzy Drake (listen to him, he sings, he raps and he embodies cultures from all around the world in his music), are so successful because they experiment with new music, they have variety and most importantly, they don’t fall prey to people’s expectations of them.
So I say,
- we are killing art.
- we need to stop suffocating creativity.
and let artist create the art they “want” to create.
How about that? ; )
Cheers!
= )
*Not that it’s a bad thing to rap about sex and money. It’s the very nature of rap itself and it comes from it’s origin roots. So yeah, you need some turn up music in life too lol ; )
Honestblogs 