When Your Masters Own Your Masters: Solange Knowles and The Oppression of Black Music Artists
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It is hard to turn anywhere in America and not see the influence of Black culture or the imprint of Black people—our work and our souls are woven into the very fabric of the nation. From the innovators of jazz, blues, and rock & roll to country, hip hop, and pop music, the Black joy, pain, and resilience that survived oppression and enslavement has served as the basis of popular music in and beyond America. Since the era of United States slavery, Black people have been exploited as a source of entertainment for white patrons, even in the absence of Black people. When Black people weren’t used, white-run minstrel shows profited off blackness by having white musicians perform in blackface. Today, not much has changed. Black culture still remains profitable. In “Rap overtakes rock as the most popular genre among music fans. Here's why,” writer Patrick Ryan explains that “For the first time ever, R&B/hip-hop has surpassed rock to become the biggest music genre in the U.S. in terms of total consumption, according to Nielsen Music's 2017 year-end report...R&B and hip-hop are music’s most consumed genre and leading the industry’s revival. In 2017, Goldman found live music, publishing, and recorded songs made $26 billion, $6 billion, and $30 billion respectively. The firm estimates by 2030 these categories are going to reach $38 billion for live music, $12.5 billion for publishing, and the biggest gain will be seen in recorded songs at $80 billion.” While both R&B and hip-hop are genres predominately written, performed, and produced by Black artists, the music industry is still run and owned by white men almost exclusively. And while many Black musical artists portray a life of glamor and opulence, according to Glassdoor.com, the average rap artist makes about $64,806, which pales in comparison to the $52.1 million WarnerMedia’s CEO Jason Kilar earned in 2020. One has to wonder how far we have really come from the days of sharecropping and indentured servitude.
It is this long history of oppression and exploitation that Solange Knowles addresses and works to escape on her 2016 album A Seat at the Table and When I Get Home, in terms of its lyrical content, aesthetic, and production. Knowles wrote most of the album outside of the commercial studio. Over the course of 3 years, she stayed between New Orleans, New York, and for the majority of the time New Iberia, Louisiana where she has roots in her enslaved ancestral history. The overall album was an ode to her Black Louisiana heritage. She was quoted as saying “It's more than an album to me. It's a transitional time in my life." During this time, Knowles also started her own record label Saint Heron with a distribution deal through Sony Music Group. Without the shackles of a white executive having a hand in the creative direction of A Seat at the Table, Knowles had complete creative control over every aspect of the album's production, which allowed her explore Black creative expression away from the profit margins of white men. The struggles of being a public-facing Black artist without a well-oiled machine running everything from the lyrics to the image is taxing, but Knowles’s doggedness paid off. The album garnered Knowles her first number one song on the Billboard 200, and her first Grammy nomination and win for its leading single “Crane’s in the Sky.”
Knowles is direct about the album's intended purpose and audience. On “F.U.B.U.” she sings: “Play this song and sing it on your terms. For us, this shit is for us” to instruct Black listeners to express themselves without any concern for white dominant culture. Later in the song, she drives home the importance of creating and holding space for Black expression when she sings “Some shit is a must. This shit is for us.” Aware that she has plenty of white listeners, Knowles is clear about centering her Black audience and presenting her album as not just a consumable object, but a collective space she's carved out specifically for them. Throughout the album, Knowles reclaims Black bodies, objects, places, and artifacts that have been appropriated, exploited, and erased. On "Almeda," she sings: “Black skin, black braids. Black waves, Black days. Black baes, Black things. These are Black-owned things. Black faith still can't be washed away. Not even in that Florida water.” Here, "Florida water" speaks to the genocide of Africans and the ethnic cleansing of African Americans. "Florida water" is a direct reference to the Mid-Atlantic slave trade, when many Africans who were being transported to America as slaves drowned. In "Alameda," Florida water is also being used to white-wash Black culture, from Black hair to Black faith, referring to the ancestral spiritual practices from Africa that Black people, even those who are Christian, still have.
Aside from reclaiming Black culture, objects, and bodies for Black people, Knowles also uses uses her album to restore the sacred nature of Black bodies and Black art that commodification has stripped from them. In the "We Deal with the Freak'n (intermission)" Knowles speaks: “It's not about the physical manifestation of sex. Now we deal with the freak'n. But that's in volume two! First, I'm tryna get the woman to understand the dynamic power and the spiritual energy. Do you realize how magnificent you are? The God that created you is a divine architect. That created the moon, the sun, the stars, Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Venus. We are not only sexual beings. We are the walking embodiment of God-consciousness.” Here, Knowles speaks on the divinity of the female body and its ability to reproduce Blackness not only through biological reproduction, but through creative expression and our very existence. While the music industry strips Black creators down to a marketing product, Knowles reminds us that Black people are still God-created and celestial beings.
While Knowles created an album on her own terms and her own label specifically for people in the African diaspora, it's also true that she still had to rely on Sony to distribute her album in a mostly white-owned marketplace that still caters to white consumers. Even today, when social media platforms have allowed more and more Black artists to independently create and distribute their music, those distribution channels haven't created more opportunties. In fact, their algorithms have automated white supremacy and anti-Blackness. It has been documented that Black creators face heavier censorship on applications like TikTok and Instagram than their white counterparts. In an ABC News article by Conor Murray, “TikTok algorithm error sparks allegations of racial bias,” Murray wrote of the Black TikTok creator, Ziggy Tyler: “Tyler tried a number of phrases, including ones declaring his support for “Black Lives Matter,” “black people,” “black voices” and “black success,” and simply stating “I am a black man” — all of which would immediately trigger a pop-up message prompting him to “remove any inappropriate content.” While Black creators can access a large platform to share and create music, they are still met with censorship depending on their content, asked to make their experiences and art palatable for non-Black audiences. Unless a Black artist is in partnership or management with a major label, it seems harder and even in some cases impossible to get the content out to the public. Even when posting harmless content, Black creators have their content reported and removed at higher rates than other accounts, or they are targeted by racist harassment that has only increased in online spaces.
The many challenges for Black artists to make their art, make it their way and for their communities, and to have it reach those audiences makes the success of Solange Knowles's album that much more impressive and powerful. While Black artists have defined the music and entertainment industry since the moment their feet touched American soil, it is still true that they are seldom the owners of their own "freak'n" work. Until NFL players own their teams and a multi-platinum artist owns her masters, Black music, culture, and bodies will be monetized with no clear end in sight.
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WORKS CITED
Connor Murray, TikTok algorithm error sparks allegations of racial bias, Accessed 2/25/22. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tiktok-algorithm-prevents-user-declaring-support-black-lives-matter-n1273413
Kori Hale, Goldman Sachs Bets On Hip Hop And Millennials For Music Revival, Accessed 2/23/22
Patrick Ryan, Rap overtakes rock as the most popular genre among music fans. Here's why, Accessed 2/23/22
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