The illusion of time...

“The reason I wear this clock is because it represents time being the most important element in our life. Time can't afford to be wasted (cause) God only gave us one life. Each minute we live, we got to live each second to our best value. Time brought us up in here, and time can also take us out. I always say, I'm 'clockin', I'm 'clockin'; that means I'm paying attention... so you can't pull a fast one on me, cause I know what time it is.”
--William Drayton a.k.a. Flavor Flav

William Johnathan Drayton Jr. a.k.a. Flavor Flav, was born in Roosevelt, New York. He grew up in the nearby municipality of Freeport, New York and both these locales are ensconced in the town of Hempstead, Long Island. He was a member of a church's youth choir and was considered a prodigious musician who also played piano, drums and guitar. Chuck D is quoted as saying that William is proficient in 15 instruments.

Even though William didn't enjoy the rote academics of the american educational system, he graduated from culinary school in 1978. He's cooked in several restaurants, thus, when he pursued a career in music, he gave himself the moniker 'Flavor Flav'.

In his young adulthood, William attended Adelphi university. There he met graphic design student Chuck Ridenhour, who would eventually become 'Chuck D'.

William and Chuck, along with the Shocklee brothers, who would eventually become the musical production team called the 'bomb squad', would go on to form the rap group 'Public Enemy'. They named themselves after the single they put out called 'Public Enemy #1'.

In 1984, the Public Enemy #1 track brought the group to the attention of 'Def Jam' record executive Rick Rubin. Rick only wanted to sign Chuck to a solo artist's deal, but Chuck was insistent that if Rick and Russell Simmons wanted him, they'd have to take his 'posse'. Thus, the whole of 'Public Enemy', including William as Flavor Flav, was signed to Def Jam in 1986.

The group's first album, Yo! Bum rush the show, was released in 1987. Although it put the group on the commercial music map, by the time the record was released, it sounded dated compared to the emerging rap stylings of master emcees like Rakim. So Public Enemy (PE) went back into the studio and created their magnum opus.

'It takes a nation of millions to hold us back' was PE's second album, and this record is nothing short of a masterpiece. Released in 1988, this album spoke directly to the american government's campaign to flood poor and working class Black neighborhoods with rock cocaine, i.e. 'crack'. PE put this crisis to music with songs like, 'Night of the living baseheads' and 'Black steel in the hour of chaos' (“a cell is hell, I'm a rebel, so I re-bel”). Their single 'Fight the power', which came out in 1989 for the 'Do the Right Thing' movie soundtrack, was the sonic masterwork that quickly made them a household name.

Now, while PE's star shined brightly, several pseudo-scholars working in the music industry, namely Rick Rubin and Public Enemy's publicist Bill Adler, didn't understand what function William as 'Flavor' played in the group. Well, this happens when whitebois are in the Hip-Hop culture but not 'of' it.

A wise brotha once said that Flavor Flav was, “The spoonful of sugar that made PE's bitter medication go down more effectively.” This brotha understood that Chuck's delivery was so powerful that Flav was needed to attract the general masses of casual Black listeners who just wanted to party and dance. In essence, Flav was PE's stealthy secret weapon.

Now, several years after PE's monumental run in mainstream music, Flav became a household name to a whole new generation with his 'reality' TV show 'Flavor of Love'. At this show's zenith, 7.5 million viewers tuned in for the Season Finale of 'Flavor of Love 2'; and this propelled the episode to the #1 telecast on cable for that night, and gave the show the accolades of being the #1 non-sports telecast in all of basic cable for the entire year.

William parlayed his TV success into retail franchises, namely 'Flavor Flav's house of flavor' in Las Vegas which opened on his birthday in March of 2012, and a restaurant called 'Flavor Flav's Chicken and Ribs' which opened in December of that same year.

Now, you may be asking why I'm aggrandizing a buffoon like Flav when I'm a Black Nationalist. Well, the answer is because I know, as should every Black person, that Flavor Flav is the illusionary character William Drayton created to make himself rich.

Basically, the TV show 'Flavor of Love' was an interpretation of the whole Hugh Hefner/Playboy mansion mythos, and William showed he was able to capitalize on his former culinary experience with his 'chicken and ribs' franchise. We should understand that William is not the happy-go-lucky, buck-dancing minstrel that he's selling to mainstream audiences...again, Flavor Flav, the character William created, is an illusion. The real William Drayton is the man that waxed philosophic about the meaning of time under this post's header, which answered the question of why he wears those colossal clocks on his chest.

Then Flav's clocks got me thinking about the illusion of time itself.

And it also got me thinking about when I used to take the train to work. In my city, music is pumped into the subway system. And what's played exclusively in this system, is up-tempo european classical music. Now, the average commuter probably doesn't even notice this music playing half the time, and if they do, they don't realize the sublime conditioning they're ingesting during their commute.

Firstly, the playing of european classical music sends the message that this is the soundtrack of urbane, upper-scale people; so in essence, we should all acquaint and associate ourselves with this stuffy old music that lost its relevance centuries ago. Second, it says that europeans are superior because they listen to and create the majority of this music. And third, these up-tempo songs are meant to get the commuter to their job, school or place of worship, more quickly...or in a more 'timely' fashion.

This eventually got me thinking about the white fascist construct of hours, minutes and seconds.

Now, you may be thinking, c'mon MontUHURU, fascist concept of hours, minutes and seconds? You're reachin' for stuff now bruh!

So let me expound on what I mean...

There's a difference between the earth's 'natural' time, and the 'constructed' time of white fascists. We need to understand that once white fascists got rid of the 'barter system' and replaced that paradigm of trading goods for services with their 'currency' or money, they had to devise a way to get the proletariat into some sort of orthodoxy where they could toil to make their currency.

In order to accomplish this and have more control over the proletariat and nature itself, they instituted an artificial time to not only get the working classes to their jobs regularly, but to keep our minds mired in this white fascist system from the cradle to the grave. Remember, if the working masses didn't have a job, a school or a house of worship to go to; or a million channels of cable to watch, some of us might start to think. And the conclusion we might draw is, this whole fascist system is built on our backs, so if we just refuse to participate, it will collapse. This would actually give the power back to its rightful owners, the proletariat.

So the white fascist's artificial time keeps us toiling over jobs, makes sure we get 'educated' and keeps us watching an assortment of movies, sporting events, fashion shows, reality TV programs, etc. while we're raising children. So in the white fascist social order, there's NO time to really think. Again, we're purposely kept busy so we don't have any moments to reflect on rebelling against this system.

Now, the earth's natural time doesn't run in hours, minutes, seconds, etc. The earth's natural time is SEASONAL. So while you're toiling on a job and raising children, you and your neighbors actually have time to think about which direction you want your life to go in. Rather than having your life plotted out before you're even born. In this paradigm, you're not stuck obsessing over getting dressed in a half hour, so you can make the train or bus that'll get you to your job in forty-five minutes,etc.

So I've said all this to say, we need to realize that the LAST place you're gonna' find out the truth about any white fascist social order, is IN that white fascist social order.

You have to come up out of it mentally, to get an objective perspective on it and decide which parts of it you'll abide by, and which parts you won't.

And this is especially crucial for Black men and women, here's why...

We're made to hate ourselves more than any other kind of person on the planet because we have the most genetic power to breed our oppressors (i.e. white people) out of existence.

And because of this, it's imperative that we know that the LAST place we're gonna' find out the truth about the white fascist social order that produced our self-hatred, is IN that white fascist social order. We have to come up out of this social order mentally, to look objectively at our white-fascist induced self-hatred, so we can ultimately get rid of it.

Now, what does this mean?

It means the first way, or the most immediate way, any Black man or woman can get out of our conditioned self-hatred is by realizing that WE ARE NOT BORN HATING OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER!

We need to understand at a very conscious and visceral level that Black people go through a very intensive conditioning process, more than any other kind of person, over the course of decades, that turns us into self-hating men and women.

And we also need to realize that any dysfunction we see, especially collectively in the Black Diaspora, is a direct result of our being conditioned to hate ourselves more than any other ethnic group.

Once we do this, then we can look at ourselves and each other with more affectionate eyes, thus, we'll begin the healing process that will not only end the rift between Black men and women, but will begin the process of saving the Black 'nuclear' family.

Now, if we wanted to do this with more permanency, we could go about the work of reconditioning ourselves at sub-conscious levels. This would require more intensive work rituals that would probably include methods of traditional meditation, chanting, breathing exercises, self-hypnosis, etc. But for the Black man and woman who's not ready to go there yet, the first step is recognizing what's been done to us and why.

Now, if we don't get an outsider's objective view of what's been done to us, here's three things that'll happen:

One: a Black man or woman who doesn't realize how they've been conditioned to hate themselves and everyone who looks like them will see some kind of dysfunction displayed in a member of the opposite sex, and condemn ALL Black men or women for the dysfunction they see.

Two: at some point this same person, seeing this dysfunction displayed in their own gender will draw the conclusion that ALL Black people are born like this, and will cast an aspersion on ALL Black people.

Three: this same person consciously or sub-consciously, will have these experiences reinforce reasons why they should hate themselves for being Black.

And you and I know this happens all day, every day.

I remember recently, I was talking to a young Black woman at a gas station, and when she saw another Black person smoking a cigarette near the gas pump, she said: “...don't they know that's a fire hazard? That's why no one likes Black people.” A second later, I pointed out a white person doing the same thing.

Then I remember an older Black man and I were discussing something about the Black Diaspora, to which he stated: “Well, Black people destroy each other.” When I told him that white fascists have conditioned us to destroy each other, he nodded his head realizing the statement made sense.

And that's the white fascist plan for us, to keep us in cycles of self-hatred from the cradle to the grave, just like this young Black woman and this older Black man.

So, the real question is do we ultimately want to get rid of our self-hatred?

Have we become so comfortable thinking our dysfunction(s) are natural to us, that we'll never recondition ourselves out of them?

That's the question every Black man and woman needs to ask themselves.

And we need to do it in a timely fashion!

Later...

MontUHURU MImia

Why Mona Scott's 'Love and Hip-Hop' is so addictive...and why I'll stop watching the show...

Why can't I stop watching 'Love and Hip-Hop'?

I mean, I realize why all the critics hate it, and I understand why I shouldn't like it either; but there's something about this show that keeps me tuning in season after season.

The fact that this show seamlessly blends the televised genres of the classic soap opera with the best celebrity gossip news casts, says something about the ingenuity of the people producing it. 

I liken this show's effects on people to the time I first read an issue of 'wired' magazine; I thought wow, I've never been so informed and entertained by one magazine in my life. 

Of course there's nothing that edifying about this show, but it terms of pure entertainment value, I have to admit it's got all the right stuff.

And coincidentally, I stopped reading 'wired' because its writing staff is comprised of a bunch of 'neo-liberal' white bigots. 

But in an attempt to understand the show's magnetism, I thought I'd look into the backstory of it's executive producer, and see how her career and life reflect what I'm seeing on the show. 

After Mona Scott's collegiate years, she took on a job as the manager of a graphic designer's firm in New York City. 

One christmas holiday, she took a side job as a P.R. (public relations) rep. at Radio City Music Hall. This is where she says she got her first taste of interacting with celebrities. 

While taking dancing classes at a studio called 'Broadway Dance Center', she came in contact with a woman's dance consortium called 'Duntori'. They did A&R (artist and repertoire, i.e. artist development) for a musical group called the 'A-team'; and liking Mona's skills, they hired her to help with the group's choreography.  

Unbeknownst to Mona, the group was managed by a company called the 'Trackmasters'; and after assessing her multi-tasking skills, they approached Mona about coming aboard to help manage their group. 

This is when Mona met the late Chris Lighty, being that he was a friend of the 'Trackmasters'. 

After the 'Trackmasters' and Mona decided to part ways, she and Chris went on to form their own management company which they later named 'Violator' management.

At first, Mona was surprised at how comprehensive a job artist management was. She was at every meeting, she went on artist's tours, and she also styled 'Foxy Brown' for her first videos. She says she spent more time on the job than she did with her own family. 

Mona says she recognized that as she built these artist's brands to the point where they were being called for spots on TV and certain sponsorships, that her artist's would turn to other managers who came in and took over; and she and Chris would be left out of those negotiations. 

She and Chris then formulated a plan where they could maintain control of their artists at that phase of their careers. 

This lead to a deal with the founder of a company called the 'Creative Artist's association'; and it was this connection that lead to a show starring Missy Elliott called 'Road to Stardom' for the 'UPN' network. This was one of the first shows dealing with artists showcasing their talents ala 'american Idol'. Mona said she liked the challenge of conceptualizing various elements of a TV show, and decided this is where she'd concentrate her future efforts. 

Love and Hip-Hop's Yandy Smith, was a co-worker of Mona's at Violator. She had taken on the managing of rapper Jim Jones and bought him to Mona as a client of Violator management. 

Jim Ackerman of VH1 wanted to build a show around Jim Jones at the time, but Jones was reluctant due to the fact that he had personal issues that made it hard for him to adapt to the 'reality show' format. Meaning, he couldn't stand being followed by cameras 24/7.

So instead of concentrating on Jones, Mona concentrated on the females surrounding him; like his mother and his woman friend Chrissy Lampkin. 

And Mona noticed the popularity of reality TV shows that were more female-oriented, like the 'Real Housewives of...wherever'. And that's where the idea of 'Love and Hip-Hop' was born. 

Now, with that said, the ingenuity of Mona Scott's rise to power should definitely be applauded...but here's why I'm going to stop watching Love and Hip-Hop.

This show's portrayal of black women has them looking like the embodiment of everything that's wrong with today's modern woman. 

I mean, how many times have we seen these women physically fighting?

Beyond their being loud and profane, they're pulling out weaves, throwing drinks or any other pieces of furniture that might be handy, and being made to look like the she-demons of the world.

If I ever met Mona, I'd ask her, as a black woman, is this the way you want yourselves portrayed?

Now, I don't expect every black woman on TV to be Claire Huxtable (Bill Cosby's wife on the Cosby Show for those under 25), although it would be a nice change; but there are other, more urbane ways of showing black women having a problem with each other. 

It doesn't always have to resort to weave-pulling slugfests. 

And consciously or sub-consciously, the message this is sending to the world's men, is that we shouldn't want anything to do with a black woman. 

And it's not just Mona who's in on this action, Shonda Rhimes, the executive producer of 'Scandal', has Kerry Washington's Olivia Pope character literally having sex with the white male president in a closet...in a DAMN CLOSET!

Now, what are the world's men suppose to think of black women, when they're portraying themselves this way?

Personally, what I'd love to see...and I think a lot of other Black people would agree with me on this, is a reality show about a corporate executive like Mona, who's trying to get a series on the air about normal, everyday hardworking African-Americans, and the travails that person goes through trying to get a network to greenlight that project.

So, I've said all that to say this, I think it's time for the Black diaspora, myself included, to go to 'Love and Hip-Hop' rehab. 

It's time we boycott these shows that portray us as sub-human, even if one of our own kind is at the helm of it's production. 

I liken this show to a car wreck; in that even though it's hard not to slow down to see if we can get a glimpse of some gore, we all need to step on the gas and keep movin'. 

And I can sincerely tell you, the next time I'm jonesin' for a hit of Love and Hip-Hop, regardless of how tempting it might be, I'm turning the channel.

And I know myself, and everyone who watches this crap show religiously, will be better off for doing the same. 

Ma'at Hotep, 

MontUHURU Mimia