But Afrofuturism has nonetheless become an important vehicle that lets artists nod to the role of Afrocentrism in shaping black American culture without necessarily arguing for its historical accuracy. Younger generations, too, have arguably distanced themselves from such assertions. Many historians have taken serious issue with the idea that ancient Egyptians were black or that African Americans today can claim significant Egyptian ancestry. (For example a man taking an Afrocentric approach might flirt with a woman today by calling her a “Nubian queen,” referring to the region that was home to a number of ancient empires in southern Egypt and northern Sudan.) This has led to a tradition of framing African Americans as descendants of Egyptian royalty. The ideology of Afrocentrism encourages teaching about the achievements of the continent’s civilizations, and some public intellectuals and scholars have argued that ancient Egypt was a black African civilization. The video aligns with Afrocentrist philosophy in many ways, but particularly by depicting Kendrick’s final destination as an Egyptian tomb. Kendrick Lamar at the opening of the “All the Stars” video (Aftermath Records) As many writers, including my colleagues Vann Newkirk and Adam Serwer, have noted, Black Panther keenly understands the imaginative power of its fictional world of Wakanda, a high-tech African nation that has never been colonized. Afrofuturistic works of art build off these ideas to envision a future through the lenses of technology, sci-fi, and historical fiction. That common identity forms the basis of pan-Africanism, an ideology that advocates for political solidarity among all people of African descent. Artists who embraced Afrocentrism often relied on a hodgepodge of references to various countries and vaguely tribal motifs to create a sense of Africanness that people of the diaspora could identify with. were sampling dancehall and afrobeats more regularly, and doing more high-profile collaborations with African artists-with, for example, Drake appearing on the Nigerian rapper Wizkid’s 2017 summer hit “Come Closer.” It had become common to see hyper-specific references like Rihanna ending her 2018 Grammy performance by doing a South African dance called gwara gwara or French Montana and Swae Lee filming their 2017 video for “Unforgettable” in Kampala, Uganda.īut this approach is very different from how African American musicians from the 1980s and ’90s used to represent their relationship to the continent. In the few years before the release of the Black Panther soundtrack, mainstream black musicians popular in the U.S. The music video proved a meaningful departure from the ways in which many black artists had been depicting their connection to the African diaspora before the movie arrived. “All the Stars” also brought Afrofuturism-a philosophy that combines African and African American culture, technology, and science fiction to create provocative portrayals of the future-roaring back to center stage in hip-hop. In the video, which has more than 43 million views on YouTube, Lamar goes on a visually stunning voyage to Africa that’s loaded with symbolism and references to the continent’s many cultures.īut the short film was not just noteworthy for how it further amplified fan excitement ahead of Black Panther hitting theaters. The rapper’s new song with SZA for the Black Panther soundtrack, “All the Stars,” came to life in a music video that dropped ahead of the film’s release. If someone had enough popularity among black Americans to resurrect a discussion about migrating back to Africa, that might just be Kendrick Lamar.
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