Malanya Graham

We are the descendants of slaves. Our children have been sold from us. We’ve lost our languages, we’ve lost our tribes. We have been tortured for learning to read. We’ve been maimed for attempting to escape, lynched for our progress. Murdered as social control. In 1817 and in 2017. Our memory is our song. And when our black art becomes corrupted, we don’t end up with real estate, we end up with nothing. The dignity and truth of our experience must be maintained. Our lives must bear witness. What doesn’t bear witness in our art, collaborates.

…es, to locate himself. Or he’ll open his latest video with a quote by James Baldwin, as Jay-Z does. The process of dehumanization required for the white capitalist to exploit others in order to make money, and which defined American slavery, backfires on the black American capitalist if he still has a conscience; on some level, no matter how successful he is in business, slavery is not an abstraction he can ignore in some history book, it’s his family reunion.

A truly transformative artist will always return you to yourself, to building community, to your own power to create. An artist who exists solely within the cult of personality will make you greedy for more of her, encouraging an addiction that demands a constant investment in sustaining her mythology, while your own life atrophies. The Kardashians have made an industry of this. The dynamic of fame-addiction has always been a dang…