Footnotes for: 'The Story of OJ' {Jay-Z, The '4:44' Album}

Unsurprisingly, it seems many focused on the infidelity speculations surrounding the '4:44' album released by Jay-Z on the 30th of June 2017. For those of us that actually listened, Jay-Z illustrated everything that hinders the growth of the black community.

"Light nigga, dark nigga, faux nigga, real nigga/ Rich nigga, poor nigga, house nigga, field nigga/ Still nigga, still nigga."

The chorus of the song 'The Story of OJ' encapsulates the never-ending sense of competition and discrimination amongst black people. There is an ongoing act of alienation of the black man from the black community. We divide ourselves into cliques based on materialism and status which essentially ostracises those who do not fall into those categories. In this sense, these outcasts become the 'niggers' while, those who do, become a separate entity themselves - detaching themselves from the culture, the heritage and the history of the black man.

For centuries, black people have constantly been pitched against one another, focusing on the minutia that makes us different rather than the overwhelming similarities. We fail to realise that we are stronger as a unit. For this reason, when one black man excels and reaches a 'higher status' there is the need, by fellow black men, to demean him, highlighting every flaw and turning him into the 'nigger' created by the white man. Our generation today thrives on the negativity and the way we become the stereotypes that have been created of us. Whether it be reality shows, in which, entertainment is found in black women demeaning each other, with black men being the prize (yet a black man can confidently say he doesn't find black women attractive?). Or entertainment found in watching the 'culture' become white-washed and spending fortunes to regain what was originally ours. It seems the aim of our generation is to look like those who pay to look like us (feel free to explain the logic). By buying into and becoming these caricatures, we lose sight of what and who are, in turn, detaching ourselves from the 'culture'.

"You wanna know what's more important than throwin' away money at a strip club? Credit.... Financial freedom my only hope/ Fuck living rich and dying broke."

One of the most prolific moments of the whole album came from the illumination of the wasteful nature and ignorance of the wealthy black man, especially in entertainment. Investments and wastefulness are two different things and it seems many have it twisted. For example:

"I bought some artwork for 1 million/ 2 years later, that shit worth 2 million/ Few years later that shit worth 8 million..."

Today, success is demonstrated by going "on the 'Gram holding money to your ear". Everything seems to be about materialism, which is what Jay Z tackles so eloquently. As black people, one may suggest that because we have never known wealth, or are still conditioned by the slave mentality, we fail to recognise how wasteful we are and how ignorant we have become because of '15 minutes of fame". The need to 'Ice out' chains and to display materialism detaches from the deeply rooted analogy that:

"success is still, in many ways, a synonym for white. Once you attach 'successful' to the black man, there's a little key that has been given to you, that may give you access to the white world. That key can be taken away; Cosby, Tiger etc, however, you still have access for a limited amount of time."

In this sense, we are stuck in the slave mentality due to our ignorance and the inability to understand that the things we put our money into and what we spend our money on, still belong to the white man. The cyclical nature of putting money back into a system that uses this money to sell us false dreams whilst building its structures of oppression with our cheap labour, is what we are born into and to an extent what we die in. For this reason, Jay Z depicts the need to support blackness with such precision that for generations to come, the '4:44' album will remain timeless. It is imperative to realise that:

"the difference between a black man and a white man is... we move through the world playing defense; we don't have the capacity to play offence because we are constantly looking for the moment when you are going to be disrupted..."

By acquiring such an understanding, it becomes a necessity to build and support black owned streaming sites and create opportunities that exude blackness and black excellence. We must create the same opportunities that the world presents to us but without the monumental charge of losing our soul and the essence of our blackness. To an extent, the world fails us and we are failing ourselves by detaching ourselves from the culture, buying and legitimising structures of oppression and forgetting our heritage all in the name of temporary success and materialism.

"It's gonna take for the way-showers to do it and not get to that point and say, 'I ain't black.. I'm OJ'