Kisah Dua Weezys: Tentang Black Lives Matter dan Selebrity Kulit Hitam

by Michael Penn II

In the same Nightline interview, Wayne deflects criticisms of his music’s American reflection by noting how it’s made him “a very successful man,” before promising more. There’s an easy case for Wayne’s symbolic “cancellation,” as coined on social media when people decide to stop supporting a celebrity in the wake of a controversy. With a simple backtrack, there’s much more to discuss: Dwayne, a child, was swept into stardom for reflecting a street reality, became a millionaire overnight while surely being shielded from the impact of his representation. He’s spent decades grappling with drug addiction, a pop critical mass gaining him fans across races and backgrounds, and his experience of a white cop named Uncle Bob saving his life when he shot himself in the chest; he says the Black cops left him to die in search of evidence.

Wayne’s dodginess is easily explained by Du Bois’s principle, and may explain his frequent changes-of-heart. As a Black mouthpiece, he’s spent the majority of his life championed as an American figure for depicting the grim reality of his Blackness. His BLM praises at Lil Weezyana Fest - in a historically-Black New Orleans, to what appears to be a majority-Black audience - represent one side of his consciousness, where he became a mouthpiece for those who never made it out. The other side of that American figureship places him as the man who became an international superstar, giving him access to the privileges of celebrity while further removing him from how a white-supremacist hypercapitalist America affects Black citizens who haven’t achieved such a status. His disinterest in participating in the popular discourse - by giving no opinion and wishing to exclude himself from the narrative on UNDISPUTED - gives credence to the idea of his career success rendering the American more important than the Negro, that he’s too far removed from the notion of his Black male life being endangered in the wake of celebrity’s semi-protection. That makes the  Nightline interview more disappointing in the sense that an agitated Wayne can’t see how the work of social movements for civil rights impacts him when he’s been blessed (his words) to be rich and Black in an America that may still want him dead. (He speaks of the white cameraman filming a “nigga” with a sense of bewilderment.)

Can we read this moment as a betrayal of his Negro, of the Black folks who’ve championed and defended Wayne through years of antics and controversy? Multiracial fanbase aside, when a white gaze translates to hundreds of thousands of white bodies in the seats, and the eye of powerful white folks who control the narratives around media that promotes his content, it’s been interesting to see how his comments have thrust him back into the discourse as a coon, a sellout, a man who doesn’t think Black lives matter at all. You see it in the way Shannon Sharpe clarifies Wayne’s comments in real-time on UNDISPUTED, as if he foresaw how such doublespeak runs the consequence of pigeonholing Wayne as the aforementioned. Whether publicity or ignorance, it remains clear that Wayne is uninterested in speaking for something he can’t represent effectively, which may yield much better results than fumbling his words on the matter as he has. He wishes to live, without fucking up the money: the same place we’ve seen Young Thug when asked about Ferguson, Drake when addressing Alton Sterling, both Black men in positions of celebrity where their Blackness is commercialized via the white gaze while affording them levels of wealth attributed to whiteness.

The idea of supporting Black lives, BLM, anything Black in today’s America runs through its own double consciousness as well. Celebrities and brands alike have grappled with this idea since BLM’s inception a few years ago, where the genuineness of one’s intentions are quickly overshadowed by the potential gain and loss of such a statement as the support of customers, fans, networks all hang in the balance. Knowing this, Wayne’s doubling-down on not being a BLM mouthpiece reads much less betrayal and much more genuine due to his admittance of how quickly many news events and movements in this vein pass by him due to his lifestyle. Which begs the question: when Black figures from impoverished backgrounds, deprived of certain opportunities to be educated on these issues, reach pop culture iconography in America, should certain figures speak over others? Does it come with the territory of being a celebrity or is that a privilege in itself to expect? If they don’t elect to speak, are they to blame for their ignorance or is white-supremacist hypercapitalism to blame for wagering one’s Blackness in one’s success? What can we expect from our popular Black artists, and what can we forgive when some may not fully understand the gravity of the game in which they play?

Whichever way it goes, we’re clearly seeing two Lil Waynes speaking for a reason we’ve seen before. Whether or not we afford him the opportunity to redeem whatever trust he’s lost from this remains to be seen just like whether or not he gives a damn about our opinions anyway.

He’s still Black, he’s still American, and he’s still human with plenty of room to grow.