Notes on Strange Fruit in Kanye and Jay-Z
Walter Crunkite
Taking radically divergent musical paths after their collaboration on Watch the Throne, Jay-Z and Kanye West’s new albums share at least one common element: the haunting song about white terrorism, “Strange Fruit.” White power was maintained throughout the 20th century not only with racist laws, but with the threat of terrorism, committed by both citizens and the State. “Strange Fruit” is perhaps the most profound and sorrowful artistic account of a century of fear under the regime of white terror in the American South.

Thus Kanye's use of Nina Simone’s version of the song has been criticized by some for perverting a song about lynching into song about Molly-popping and “second string bitches.” Jay-Z, too, embeds his lyrical appropriation of the song (this time the original Billie Holiday) into a scene of lavish wealth and luxury. Hov could be said to be playing the song seemingly casually (“on holiday”), the background music for drifting on a yacht and spilling rent-money-priced champagne into the sea.

But despite the incongruity (or maybe precisely because of it), both references to the classic song fit in their respective places. Or, rather, they fit because they don’t. Both Kanye and Jay exemplify (especially with their latest offerings) and embody rap’s fundamental principle of contradiction. Yeezus is whiplash-inducing in its swiftly shifting contradictions: braggadocio and vulnerability collide inside couplets, freedom and bondage alternate, the street and penthouse meet. Ye chose the contradictory slamdances “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves” to introduce Yeezus to the world. Hova’s entire corpus is a tale of warring, contradictory ideals. He explains in his book Decoded: “Rap is built to handle contradictions…this is one of the things that makes rap at its best so human.” Hov has wrestled since Reasonable Doubt with the ever-elusive resolution of the hustler with the humanist. Jay is the first to deny any “conscious” rapper label, yet he’s regularly involved histories of political struggle in his oeuvre.

But the extreme incongruity is still jarring and unsettling. How does the stench of death and the brutality of white terrorism operate in each artist’s interpretation? What do we make of Jay and Kanye’s embroidery of the Black struggle onto the contemporary moment? Especially in the case of Kanye, is “Strange Fruit” an evocation of the past, a description of the present, or a foretelling of what’s to come? Or is it all three, a warning about the evils of power unchecked? What does it mean, new slaves? Who are the slaves?

Kanye’s “new slaves” are perhaps as much a product of corporate capitalism as race. In his impromptu February “rant” in London, Yeezy railed against corporations and their control, joining a critique of corporate capitalism with his existing critique of race: “racism and materialism is killing blacks” He continues the charge on “New Slaves”:

"Fuck you and your corporation.
Y'all niggas can't control me.
I know that we the new slaves.
I know that we the new slaves."

Kanye gets more precise later in the song, naming the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the for-profit prison industry as a culmination of power in the age of corporate capitalism. Kanye describes how the cooperation of the State and corporations like CCA works to “make new slaves” in a regime of profit.

But the racial dimension of Kanye’s “slaves” should not be diminished. While globalized capitalism does tend to (slowly) erode old modes of racial power, racism still very much exists. In fact, racism can be deployed in the service of capital. Kanye at times sounds tormented by race on the album. He cannot forget that in his union with Kim Kardashian, Kim is seen as white and Kanye as the threatening Black man. The first verses of each of Yeezus’ first two songs refer to the American stigma of the Black man with a white woman.

And it should be mentioned that every single song on the Jay/Ye collaborative album Watch the Throne mentions race and racial politics. So while Kanye describes the beginnings of a post-racial mode of control according to the dictates of the corporation, race is still the mode of power which preoccupies Kanye.
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Jigga is less conflicted about the power of the corporate elite, though hardly quietly contented by it. He’s described himself as a “product of Reaganomics,” citing the turning point in modern American history when the wealthy elite made their power grab, leaving the rest of us in precarity. Jay-Z’s ability to boast about his vast wealth is legendary, yet he shows incredible remorse for his initial elitist neglect of Katrina victims in the poignant lament “Minority Report.” He remains conflicted about his acquisition of wealth. It’s a problem since Reasonable Doubt for Hova.

In the two pre-MCHG releases, Jay-Z does make rare critiques of economics. On his fiery “Open Letter,” he packages an entire critique in a single tight couplet:

>This communist talk so confusing
When it’s from China, this very mic that I’m using.

In other words, globalized capitalism covers the earth, even (or especially) China, despite our outdated descriptor, “communist.” No, China has only perfected authoritarian capitalism, using its residual police state apparatus to enforce the will of global capital and keep labor costs low for the likes of Apple, Walmart and the corporation who made Jay’s microphone with veritable slave labor.

And on the Great Gatsby soundtrack cut, “100$ Bill,” Jay interrogates the corruptive and ubiquitous power of money, calling out politicians who do the bidding of the wealthy for campaign donations.

Like Kanye’s calling out of the DEA and CCA collaborating, Jay-Z aligns corporate power and the US state on Magna Carta’s “Oceans.” A critique of Big Oil turns immediately to a critique of US power:

>The oil spill that BP ain't clean up;
I'm anti-Santa Maria.
Only Christopher we acknowledge is Wallace;
I don't even like Washingtons in my pocket.

Like Kanye, Jay, too, has described the beginnings of a post-racial circumstance, but one that still must shed the racist heritage residing in the older, white conservative movement:

>This ain't black vs. white, my nigga we off that;
Please tell Bill O'Reilly to fall back.
Tell Rush Limbaugh to get off my balls;
It's 2010, not 1864.
Jay-Z has addressed race as much as Kanye has, if in a typically more oblique and nuanced manner. Racism and its effects pervade Jay’s work, but he isn’t usually as direct in his naming of it. Hov has seen himself as a sort of lyrical ambassador of the hood, explaining the conditions of late-20th and early-21st century racism:

>I'm only trying to show you how black niggas live,
But you don't want your little ones acting like this.
Lil Amy told Becky, Becky told Jenny,
And now they all know the skinny.

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In addition to the six-minute “Blood on the Leaves,” Kanye repeats the line furiously in “New Slaves,” alternating the macabre scene of racist violence with a now-familiar condemnation of corporate control:

>I know that we the new slaves
I see the blood on the leaves
I see the blood on the leaves
I see the blood on the leaves
I know that we the new slaves
I see the blood on the leaves
They throwin' hate at me
Want me to stay at ease
Fuck you and your corporation
Y'all niggas can't control me
I know that we the new slaves
I know that we the new slaves.

It is overstatement, to be sure. No US citizen can be said to be a slave or in any way like a target of lynching, despite the increasing power of the corporate regime. But as old modes of power dissolve (race, gender and the state), the matrix of multinational corporations and banks assume the power of governance. Try to do anything that doesn’t involve working for, buying from, or being advertised to by corporations.
But one can look to the Global South to see how unmitigated corporate power does develop slave-like conditions. The FoxConn factory where most of our Apple products are made recently installed suicide nets to catch workers who feel that death is the only escape from their torment. Coca-cola is accused of hiring paramilitary overseers in Colombia to enforce rigid working conditions. Conditions are so dire for garment workers that a factory making clothes for Walmart and other big retailers collapsed, killing 1,100 Bangladeshis in April. Walmart, the Gap and H&M all rejected plans to make conditions safer for workers there. I know that they the new slaves. There’s blood on the clothes. And for now I’m, in a way, the master.
Write the lyrics for a misc song made in 2013, titled "Notes on Strange Fruit in Kanye and Jay-Z", by artist "Walter Crunkite".