As an artist myself, I’m pretty liberal when it comes to artistic expression.  I like when things get shaken up.  Art to me isn’t just entertaining your senses.  It can be rebellious.

But there have been a few videos recently that make me really ask: What’s the point!?

Estelle for example.  I had heard about her new video for Freak, people saying she was in blackface.  I was wondering if folks were exaggerating, but you tell me…

I had to ask one of my friends who’s a stylist and highly into fashion, what is it about putting people in black make up these days?  She didn’t even know…I mean just look…

I don’t know about the girl in the American Apparel ad on the left, but Lara Stone on the right is definitely a white woman. I guess I could dismiss the Black make-up if it seemed like there was a point to all this.  Why put a white person in black make-up?  Furthermore, why put a Black, dark skinned person like Estelle in Black make up and red lipstick, which are clearly reminiscent of minstrel images?  Does Estelle represent the “Blackness” of space in the video? I guess…but her hair is lighter than her face and looks fairly nappy.  Then a few seconds later, her hair is straighter, like she’s in a short cut wig.  So…it doesn’t seem consistent…I don’t get it.  What’s the point!?

I find it hard to believe that no one asked anyone working on that video, “Um…is Estelle in blackface?”

And then Beyonce and Lady Gaga…Just watch the video first.

Ok so….what was that?

She goes to a high fashion, weird jail…gets naked…kisses a girl…gets bailed out by Beyonce…they kill people…and then they’re Thelma & Louise.

So does the jail mean something?  What does a Telephone have to do with all that?  Did you see the random product placement?!  What?!  What the hell!?  WHAT’S THE POINT!?

Please don’t tell me this is “female empowerment”.  That’s like me saying I’m wearing blackface and cooning in my next video to dismiss stereotypes.

News flash: Ladies, if you want to bring more female empowerment, then being overtly sexual and exaggerating the objectification of women won’t work in your favor.  If anything, you should go in the other direction.  You can’t always fight fire with fire, you fight fire with water.

At first, I kinda dug Lady Gaga.  I wouldn’t buy her music, but I liked that she was shaking things up and she (or her camp at least) was taking risks.  She could sing, I dug her story as paying dues (that is, if her story is actually real).  But since she’s come on the scene, it seems like being outlandish is trendy.  It’s more of a way to be seen than to actually make a statement.  As my girl Vashluv said about Lady Gaga, “What’s your message? What are you saying?…That’s cute, it’s creative, but what are you preaching?”.    And Beyonce…It seems like she just mimics whoever she’s with.  I’m actually surprised she decided to do a video like this. I’d figure she’d worry about it ruining her “brand”.

When we view a piece of  “art” we’re not just looking at it for how it entertains us, but we are also reacting to a set of decisions.  Why was the story told that way?  Furthermore, what are you saying?  What is your point?

And if you don’t have a point…

…then what’s the point?

UPDATE:  The director of the video provides an explanation of the video here juxtaposed to someone’s reading of the “symbolism”.  The director sums it up in the following:

“For us it was a little action movie with a made-up, crazy story,” Akerlund said. “You don’t have to be so deep about things. For me music videos are about entertaining and bringing out the music and the artist. The form itself allows you to be creatively free. I am a little weird and a little untraditional in how and why I tell stories in music videos. But I enjoy the fact that people go deep and see things in my work because it means the music got out there and got some attention.”

So basically, the video isn’t meant to have any special meaning, just quirky. *shrugs*

Mission accomplished.

About a year ago I was rehearsing with the homies from Breezy LoveJoy for a show we were going to have the next day.  At one point during the show, a few producers were going to have time to just play their beats.  Well during the small rehearsal J. Bizness came through.  He was a real cool guy.  Then he asked if he could play some of his beats for us.  Man..I was blown away.  And when he told me that a lot of them didn’t have samples and he never had any musical training I knew this dude was destined to be known as an ill producer.  I didn’t know then that he had already done some work with emcee Trek Life.  I finally got him to tell me his story…

Part 1

How he got into music

His earliest music memories

His influences and inspirations

How he found his “sound”

Part 2

His recent project, Reason: Bits & Pieces

Why he won’t do instrumental albums anymore

Connecting with Phonte of Little Brother/Foreign Exchange

How you can connect to him & his music

Words of advice

Associated projects & shout-outs

UPDATE, 4-20-10-  His track with Phonte made it on the album! Left Back drops today!  Peep the track…

To connect with J Bizness hit him up:

His Twitter

His Website

His Myspace

Check these out! All J Bizness productions!

Being an artist in any medium, as a profession, is hard.  People admire artists because they seem to live a carefree life, doing what they want to do.  Look at Kanye.  Very quickly he went from average Joe emcee to having an empire.  Writers, directors, producers, musicians…they live the life most people say they want.  But how did they get there?

There are lots of books that talk about how to make great art or how to be a great artist.  They focus heavily on the individual.  But not many seem to talk about the importance of teamwork and networking.  I think that’s why so many artists have issues with ego.  There’s no doubt that being an artist can be hard on ones self-esteem; but what if you have a good product or talent.  How do you get it out there?

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

2 times in my life I had clear lessons of that statment.

Lesson A.-  I was in 7th grade.  I was doing a History video project with 2 other kids, one of whom had a father who was a famous movie producer.  His father was good friends with Rob Reiner and Billy Crystal.  This was 1993, so you’re talking about THE dudes in Hollywood at the time.  At one point I said “Man…that’d be great if we could get them in our video.”  It was a passing comment.  But then we all looked at each other like “YEAH!”.  We hopped on some bikes, went down the street, caught Billy and Rob standing outside one of their houses, and got them in our video.  We laughed our butts off and couldn’t wait to present it to the class.  Oh and yes…we got an A.

Sounds silly, but it really taught me that a lot of famous people know each other, and if you can ask for a favor from one, it might just happen!

Lesson B.-  8th grade. I was in the running to be the leading role for a TV show.  It was between me and another kid.  No one liked the other kid much, but he had been in more stuff than me.  Now it was time to meet with the ABC execs.  The director and producer of the show came out and said “Ok…so they want to see more of you outside the character now.  They want to see more of your personality.  So try to just be yourself.”  I thought OK no problem.

Well when I got in the room, no one was asking me any questions, I was just standing there on display.  I panned around the room, smiling, making small talk for a few minutes.  Then I look at the top of the room toward the corner.  Everyone was whispering to each other, but one guy was looking away from the person talking to him and looking out the corner of his eye at me.  I realized I knew this guy…I had been to his house…his daughter was in my class…

“Heeeey!…I know you!”

The whole room fell silent.

“You’re Lily’s father!”.  He smiled and nodded.  “Where’s Lily been?  I haven’t seen her in school all week, is she OK?”

Suddenly you heard a lot of loud whispers, people talking to each other almost frantically.  Once me and the guy stopped our convo, the director smiled at me and said “Thank you!  That’s all for now!”

As soon as I walked out the room, I knew I got the part because of what Lesson A taught me.

I say all this to say…you can’t do it all alone.  Have you noticed Will Farell and ‘nem have the same actors, directors, and writers each film?  That’s because they know who they work well with.  And as one shines, they all shine.  Kanye didn’t get there by himself.   Nor does anyone else we see as a success.

So many artists are going at this alone with little help.  Let’s not worry about seeing our own name on the marquee in bright lights.  Get ya team together.  There’s enough space for everyone’s name, and enough money out there too.

To quote Ghostface (yes…I’m quoting Ghostface Killah):

“My seeds, run with his seeds, marry his seeds/ That’s how we keep Wu-Tang money all up in the family.”

Vashluv is an extremely creative woman I met via Twitter.  I saw a few of her vlogs on YouTube and I could tell she was a total creative, free spirit. I started following her and her blog.  She has a deep sense of style.  Her words seem to always been full of passion and sincerity.  I took a look at her portfolio and I could tell she was serious about her work.  She also knows all the dance steps to the Beat It video.  I was lucky enough to catch that in person!

I caught her while she was in town visiting from NY, and we talked about a whole bunch of stuff.  I took the prime selections of the convo and put it here.

Part 1-

Stockton

Her story

Her independent photo shoots

Part 2-

Influences

Her dislike for Lady Gaga

Being a preacher’s kid

How to find her

Words of advice

For the serious folks, hit her up at: vashluv@gmail.com

Peep her blog RIGHT HERE

Check out some samples of her work below…

Today’s musing comes at the request of the homegirl @Bellametaphor from Rawemag.  I told her this story and the advice along with it, and she said I should do a post on it.

Aside from making music and doing this site, I’m a tutor.  Mainly in math.

Math is usually a lot of people’s weakest subject.  It was mine too until college.  College was when I finally understood the process of thinking in math.  Math has a certain flow of logic to it.  I never liked math because I didn’t understand the logic and it was rarely explained in a way I could relate.   Usually we’re given a formula, and told to just do it; but, when it comes to Algebra, there is a larger frame of thought that needs to be understood so that you can get through other forms of math.

Right now I’m tutoring a 6th grader in Pre-Algebra.  Last week me and the kid were working on some problems.  I showed him a few times the process of attacking the problems.  When I gave him one to do on his own, he went straight to guessing the answer.  In his mind, if he took a guess and got it right, then regardless of anything else, it’s the right answer.  And once you have the right answer, you’re done!  That’s how most people think because of how we’re tested.  If I put the right answer, I get points.  What I did in-between doesn’t matter.

His guesses for the answer were close, but weren’t correct.  He didn’t employ the process I gave him.

So I told him this:

“What you’re doing is trying to find the answer.  Focus on the process, not the answer.“

Often times we’re just trying to find “the right answer” in life instead of knowing what the right process is.  We’re rarely told that our instincts or what we feel is the right thing to do, IS the right answer.  Worse than that, we’re never told that it’s OK to be wrong sometimes, as long as we go back and understand the process to get it right.

But my advice to the boy still applies when it comes to making art.

I’m seeing a lot of people trying to find the answer, but not trusting the process.  There are a lot of people wanting to be models but not taking professional pictures.  Rappers wanting to rap, but not studying the craft.  Singers wanting to sing and thinking auto-tune will save them.  Creating music, writing a script, painting…all of those have certain processes.  But most people are aiming for the answer- fame and money.

Focus hard on the process, and you can get to the answer.

Jay Smooth at illdoctrine came right on time with this video.  Enjoy!