June 20, 1998

Rap Music Again, or, Focus on the Puff Daddy Family

I really want to get beyond the initially overwhelming irony of the fact that Puff Daddy and gang are flaunting ther realness through a medium which falsifies; I also want to get beyond the overwhelming initial irony of the fact that Puff Daddy and the gang are flaunting their wealth through the very medium which grants it, and must grant it before they can flaunt it.

What else is going on here?

Black people usually have some sort of subversive effect on American culture; rap these days is ultraconsumeroriented.

Rap music started with a critique of the economic system, i.e., The Message. Now the message has become one of success within the economic system, and a flaunting of the injustice that was originally criticized.

This is all too superficial. I need another level...

I refuse to sell out. That’s why I’m selling out. Or, lemme put it to you like this: in the absence of young black male role models, my life is incomplete without my daily dose of Puff Daddy. Meaning, if I can sell you this one piece of writing, you’ll buy another one just like it, and the more I talk about why it is good to get money and sell out—all controversial topics, especially when written from the pen of a writer, who is supposed to be advocating authenticity above all things—the more I titillate your nerves, and give you some new shit, some wholeothalevel shit, some next shit.

So, I am being really real by being really fake for a minute. Like Puff Daddy.

Then I can write some really next shit.

Unless my heart is hardened in the meanwhile by the contempt I feel for my audience, the source of my hoped-for wealth and freedom to write what I really want. Like Puff Daddy.

What else can you feel when you are flaunting your money to those responsible for your getting it? What else can you feel when you know that the only thing that keeps you in hightop Nikes is their desire to to be like you, and the gap between their reality and their desires? You know that if you really succeed, you can’t help but go farther, ‘cause success for you means that people are spending their money on your shit, or studio time, when they should be paying the rent. And eventually, the hope that you started out with, the hope that you started selling, that you would be rich one day, becomes false hope because it becomes reality. But you can’t stop saying what you have been saying, because that is what made you rich! So, with rap artists, this wishful thinking—that if I sell out now, I can get over later, and really be real—never ends.

Niggas don’t learn.

But anyway, I’m selling out this time. And the next time. And a little bit after that. ‘Cause I’m not writing about being rich. I’m writing about being broke and why I’m writing about being broke. To get rich. My hope can never die. My hope can never falsify.

After I get over on you fools, I’ma go to France like Baldwin, and write some really far out shit. Or Germany and start speaking Deutschmacks and Cadillacs.

Niggas don’t learn.

Puff Daddy makes music that acknowledges the master of art today: money alone controls. It truly is all about the benjamins.

To cover this cruelty, Puffy keeps it all in The Family. As if domestic abuse were not abuse. His “family” makes stars of all its siblings, and while we are not privy to the spats that certainly must take place, we can be assured of the internal strife in this family by Puffy’s overcompensatory proclamations of love, love, love.

rap hiphop Puff.Daddy P.Diddy wishful.thinking bling