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A Rapper Salutes the Slave Trade
Our music critic calls Soulja Boy on the carpet.
One of the biggest songs in the country last year was an inane, sex-chant-infused Southern rap called "Crank That (Soulja Boy)," by young Soulja Boy Tell Em, from tiny Batesville, Mississippi, population 7,113. Soulja Boy Tell Em turned 18 this summer and is looking forward to voting for the first time. His monster hit song included repeated assertions of a cartoonishly absurd sex act: supermanning, or as he elaborated repeatedly in the song, "Superman that ho," which means to come on a woman's back and then put a sheet over her so it sticks to her back and she looks like she’s wearing a cape. Ridiculous stuff. He also chants repeatedly, "Supersoak that ho,” the meaning of which needs no explanation, given the neighborhood we're already in.
These are ludicrous suggestions that play into the Cro-Magnon conception of men using sex and sperm to attack and slay women. It's such a mean-spirited vision of sex that every time I heard the record I thought, I bet that before this came out, he was a virgin.
I asked him, “What historical figure do you most hate?” He said, "Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we'd still be in Africa.”
Last week in Atlanta, I got to interview Soulja Boy Tell Em. I found out just how young he really is. He was one of about ten rappers I interviewed in one day for my BET show, The Black Carpet. I decided it'd be fun to give all the rappers part of the Proust questionnaire. I thought it'd be a way to get beyond image and into who they really are. Most of the guys gave good, thoughtful, intelligent, sensitive answers. I asked Juelz Santana, “How would you like to die?” He said, "Loved."
Then came Soulja Boy Tell Em. I asked him, “What historical figure do you most hate?” He was stumped. I said, "Others have said Hitler, bin Laden, the slave masters..." He said, "Oh wait! Hold up! Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we'd still be in Africa."
My jaw, at this point, was on the ground."We wouldn't be here," he continued, having no idea how far in it he'd stepped, "to get this ice and tattoos."
Wow. Never mind that diamonds come from Africa. Never mind that there were many generations of pain in between leaving Africa and getting diamonds. Never mind that the long-term cataclysmic effects of subtracting about tens of millions of young, strong people from Africa over the course of a couple of centuries is a large part of the reason why Africa now appears so distasteful to you. Never mind all that, Soulja Boy. You put country first.
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I think, too, that there are many thoughtful rappers on the scene today. I hope Soulja Boy is open to schooling by his peers.
Wow... I'm speechless.
The inane music from Soulja Boy is enough to make any rational human being shudder. It's a shame that his ignorance and age betrayed him.
Like you said, he's a kid. He just turned 18, and now he's living in the fantasy world of celebrity. No hate, but I saw him on MTV Jams with a couple older dudes in a serious rap discussion and his points were weak and goofy...I think we just need to wait for him to mature.
And I feel like after hyphy and snap, rappers are shifting from completely goofy back to semi-seious. I don't think 'YAHHH!' will stand the test of time.
I don't think youth can forgive such an idiotic statement.
This is what happens when you drop school for the short lived hip hop career.
Wow. This bad attitude towards women is properly adversely affecting his ability to get "ho's" to be c-m buckets for him.
I have worked twice as a contract employee for USAID in Africa. I discuss African issues with a good friend, who is Ghanian by birth, but was raised in Liberia. He feels that the colonial period in Africa helped moderate the murderous tribalism that is all too evident even today (e.g., Rwanda, Congo, Ivory, Coast). Many Africas would jump at the chance to emigrate to America. Touche, Toure.
I am very much ashamed for him. He is unaware of his own ignorance.
This only reinforces my view that he is one of the many "artists" that are a cancer to the entire hip-hop/rap genres.
I want to be mad, but more than anything I'm really sad that there is such a gaping hole in his education and sense of who he is in the larger context of the world. Of course, we can want to hold him to a higher standard because he is an entertainer and on a platform to influence the way [white] people see Black/African Americans, but the reality is there a lot of people--young and old--who are victims of internalized oppression. I think the it was Biko who said, "The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
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Soulja Boy's shout out to slave masters reminds me of the "Seinfeld" episode where Jerry and his girlfriend are making out during "Schindlers List."
You can be sickened by that, or you can laugh and see that liberty means having the freedom to express that kind of irreverence.
I'm uncomfortable when black people call each other "n***er" but I accept that it comes from the same irreverent place, and I understand that it doesn't give me the right to use the word.
I would bet that Toure has called another black person "n***er" at least once. He has probably also boasted about his imagined sexual prowess too, guys do that stuff.
Souljah Boy sounds just like any clueless American teenage boy -- lighten up and let him be.
I've known context of this song since it was released. What is completely baffling is the degree to which its completely offensive nature is overlooked due to its pop culture appeal.
Because to 'crank that' is seen as a must for those who go clubbing.
As for the boy, he should have a better manager and PR team to keeps his completely absurdist comments in check.
The only thing that could be worse than having misguided youth, is having misguided adults prey on and celebrate this horrible cycle. Soulja Boy might not understand prose, but I'm sure he knows how to ignore the media hose...
"I bet that before this came out, he was a virgin."
That pretty much sums it all up.
Maybe he wants to be one of those African-American Republican pundits on thy have cable news shows when he grows up.
on thy have should be:
they have on
I guess Soulja Boy went Rogue
Can someone help me out here...if Soulja Boy's ancestors were not brought to America, albeit in one of the most disturbing/reprehensible acts committed by mankind, then Soulja boy would probably not be a rich award winning rapper. Therefore he is grateful, and he is leaving his past him, not willing to dwell on it but move beyond it. He is acting like he is not a victim, and the real victims are dead now and we've done all we could to apologize and make amends. Are we still supposed to dwell on it and not accept that it happened and that it is now over?
joedd3,
I think you missed the point the author of the article was making. Also your African friend shows his ignorance on West Africa. During the medieval times of Europe the Mali empire controlled much of West Africa and gold and salt trade Timbuktu was the educational center of Africa. You can do a quick goggle and its all there at your finger tips.
Laire07,
Not true. "The medieval times" , as you call them, lasted from 1 AD to the early 1400s. The Europeans, during that period, didn't have the technology yet to sail any great distance so therefore they never had any direct contact with the Mali Empire. It wasn't until 1700s that they began colonizing and controlling West Africa. .. By that time the Mali Empire had split up and no longer existed.
bananaphone (on slavery): "Are we still supposed to dwell on it and not accept that it happened and that it is now over?"
I understand people's wish to leave slavery in the past. However there is little doubt that slavery the effects of slavery still reverberate with us today. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I don't think placing it in the past and sticking our fingers in our ears, trying to forget about it is a realistic one.
To give it a bit of context, Soulja Boy's comments would be akin to someone Jewish, giving a shout-out to the nazi's. As with slavery, their history was effected in a horrible and tragic way. But to commend the tragedy itself is distasteful, to say the least.
Oh, and I was 18 once too.
I just wasn't that stupid.
My grandmother is from Guam. A place that was occupied and oppressed for 500 years by the spanish, french, english, chinese, and japanese as well as a few other's in between.
If I was to get upset about people who enslaved my people, I would pretty much have to discriminate against everyone. But I won't, because it's stupid. I personally can't say exactly who was responsible on an individual basis.
When the Japanese was in control before WWII, my family was given a handful of rice for the day and if they were caught picking fruit or fishing, they were killed on site. Then America acquired Guam in a treaty after WWII and they put all my people in concentration camps for a while until a few years after the treaty.
Now. I never had people telling me how wrong this was growing up. I was forced to look things up and determine for myself that I shouldn't be upset at another race for what a few dead people did a long time ago and really, it wasn't that long ago.
See, just like bin laden uses religion to control people and get a base, so does Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan use race to rally a base of people for their own special interests. To get rich off of their people.
They wear suits while their people are starving and suffering. Don't get me wrong, each of them were there during significant points of the movement for equality, but really when they were there, all they did was be beside another, larger, man that really did have interests in making things right for their people.
Suffice to say, your new slave masters replaced your old slave masters by making you focus on how terrible is was. Where is the talk of progress? Where is the action and not just reaction?
You allow yourself to be controlled by dwelling on an oppressive time that you didn't even live through. It doesn't mean you should ever forget, but how are you to progress to the future if you spend so much time dwelling in the past.
I got your "years of oppression" beat by a few hundred years and I will eat sushi and smile that the world has progressed to a point to where you are only a slave if you want to be.
Allowing yourself to be controlled by people that live in the past is enslaving you preventing a progressive future where none of that stuff matters.
Anyone who believes that we live in a racist society is fooling themselves. We live in a classist society often mistaken for racism. If one white man, has no money, he isn't going to get much respect. If one black man is a millionaire, he is going to get respect. You go into a store with no money, they are going to figure out you are just looking around and shoo you off, if you hold up some cash, you can take your time.
All I'm saying you put power in a word or a concept. You allow yourself to be controlled by people that empower these words and concepts for you because you listen to them. If you didn't empower the words and concepts, they would bear no true relevance on your life.
So in conclusion. Shut up with this senseless drivel. You only make things worse. Soulja Boy doesn't put power in a concept and thus is free of his slave masters. I don't think you can say the same.
Just as Oprah Winfrey was discriminated against while shopping in Paris --"They denied her entry and, told her that they have been "having a problem with North Africans lately."--anyone who is ignorant and chooses to hate does not care if you have a million dollars or how intelligent you are.
The mere fact that Soulja Boy values his ice and tatoos proves that he has no love for himself nor where his ancestors come from. I don't think his age has anything to do with his particular mindframe because without a doubt there are those of us who are much more mature and hold these same values. Saying that his comments affect me have no correlation to my being mentally enslaved. I am thouroughly in love with my African culture, both in the states and abroad. I don't have to hate my history, on the contrare I am proud to say that I come from a stock that was able to persevere through what we did.
There are ignorant people of all colors, unfortunately for us we feel that we have to continue proving our worth over and over again to undue the negative stereotypes out there. I'd like to here from this young rapper after he's been to the Mother Land.
Thank you.
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