Accountability in Music • Page 200

Just gonna pop in here to say that the phrase "Mute R Kelly" is a movement that has existed for years now that has nothing to do with Spotify, but is a grassroots effort created, lead, and carried out pretty much solely by black women with very little public support to (rightfully) destroy his career and silence him as a performer since our legal system refuses to hold the man accountable.

Just don't want Spotify's muting feature and that movement to get conflated because those women deserve better.

 

I get that, JL is not perceived as CB is and doesn't have a racial baggage in his controversy. But my point is that I'm glad people don't defend him in the dumbest ways publicly. I'm glad somebody like Andy Hull or whomever didn't. It would of soured me on guys who I think are trying to be decent in all of this.

 

you have certainly missed my point, but I am too tired to try and explain to you. I pass the torch for anyone who wants to step in and clear it up if they think they can. but I'm not sure anyone will.

 

it's definitely not the same situations. fwiw kevin devine's his best friend, no? i think kd was coming from a place of understanding the power of accountability and becoming a better person from the fucked up stuff you did when you were younger. of course kd was an addict and jesse lacey preyed on young girls so it's galaxies apart in terms of gravity, but I can put my self in kdev's shoes and see why he would approach the jesse lacey situation more delicately than people might've wanted to see- he probably thinks that he's done things that should be unforgiveable, but he still has people who back him (what I got from his statement). i don't think his response would've necessarily been appropriate coming from other people, especially just random fans who (assuming) don't know jesse lacey apart from the fact that he was in brand new, but based on the way he said his piece on this whole thing, I'm okay with it. i think people who do fucked up things don't necessarily deserve the whole world to give them a chance at redemption, but I also think it's important for these people to not be completely isolated, since there's no road to recovery from there.

 

I'm gonna go out on a conspiracy wing here and say that it would shock me if the CB defence isn't a concentrated effort orchestrated by some manager or PR agent or whatever. like, if he really did what he's accused of- and his past history + having french police arrest him, something that's hard to do on a rape case, point to the fact that he most probably did- then there's no way other big names didn't know about it.

like if harvey weinstein, someone richer and infinitely more powerful than chris brown can harm countless women over decades, and keep that secret so poorly that fucking family guy made a gag about it a decade ago, how do guys like justin bieber or drake or nick cannon seriously, honestly believe he's innocent? they probably don't, they probably just don't wanna be the next one facing the heat. it's also much easier to silence women when the accuser is an ambiguous thing; most people heard the cb accusation from like tmz, or perez hilton, or whatever, and considering the people in cb's circle are not as accessible as the ones in JL's, most people probably gathered much less info about the chris brown story than they did the jesse lacey story, who's accuser came out on a facebook thread, knows a ton of people with pull in the scene, and was nearly immediately able to come out with a timeline of all the shit jesse has done for the last ~2 decades, with witnesses to boot.

tl;dr, jesse's shit was basically cooked from the start, so his friends couldn't really come to his defence. chris brown is incredibly more insulated, and you can defend cb without much pushback; his team is and will obfuscate the facts, launch a discrediting campaign, etc. i can't speak on the racial dynamics of his case; if anything I would wager that people think the allegations are false because he's a rich desirable man, not a black man falsely accused because he's black, but other famous black people have gotten targeted for stuff they didn't do before so I guess I can see why that might make sense to someone.

 

Dont underestimate the race aspect. As has already been pointed out in this thread, Cosby and OJ both had staunch defenders from the black (male) community long after it was clear they were guilty. It plays a huge part in these things.

 

Not enough spoons to fully engage with this conversation right now but want to make it clear when I point out the racial nuances it’s certainly NOT in an attempt to shame the black community or anything like that. I’m trying to just consider everything from a nuanced intersectional position and to me that means acknowledging certain things in order to better understand them.

 

I do agree that it's hard to compare the situations because, in addition to things stated above, the platform for brand new was huge, they were nowhere near to those with over 10 years of multiple top billboard singles and major label backing. That combined with them planning to call it quits around that time anyway definitely helped the decisions for men in that scene who had kept quiet despite the fact that they may or may not have known or knew parts but not the whole thing and such continue to keep quiet and save themselves the extra work rather than go to bat.

It's a part of music that thrives much more on deceiving than anything and a lot of men in that particular section of the alt-rock scene adopt leftist language to enable their manipulation and it is easier to protect their boys club by saying that the jesse situation was just a fluke in it (especially since he didn't have a social media presence.) That tactic isn't exclusive to the alternative rock scene (see: louis ck) but tends to be the drug of choice due to certain intersections of privilege and using the membership to "progressive" parts of the industry as public relations since many aren't big enough to have an actual team.

 

I read a story today that is right along the lines of the last few posts:

‘Surviving R. Kelly’ Producer Dream Hampton Is Fed Up with Her Generation of Women
After having to call out Erykah Badu and Taraji P. Henson for seemingly sympathizing with Kelly, executive producer dream hampton let her generation have it.
By Taylor Hosking| Jan 23 2019, 8:00pm | FEMINISM
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...ampton-is-fed-up-with-her-generation-of-women

The article is worth reading, it names a lot of stars and interactions Dream Hampton has had recently after the airing of her documentary Surviving R Kelly. The article focuses on the generational aspect of how few 40-something stars ever spoke out against R. Kelly.

I think that's interesting because it's a kind of tunnel vision to talk about how the 40-something stars did something different in their 20s than 20-something stars are doing today who have partnered with artists accused of especially serious violent crimes, like xxxtentatacion, 6ix9ine, etc. The 20-something #metoo generation doesn't seem to be any more or less woke than the 40-somethings she is speaking to in social media posts like these or through the 40-something-plus demographic of women that the network Lifetime reached. As with R. Kelly when he was a 20-something, there's lots of young people who are turned off by bad boy or bad girl style, and lots who are turned on.

For evidence of that, go to Google news and search for xxxtentacion, restricting the results to only those published this year -- the results look like he's still alive with dozens (at least) of articles dated as published in the month to date on new recordings being released and artists somehow collaborating with him even though he's deceased.

Or, do the same Google News search for 6ix9ine limited to the past month and except for the articles that talk about his recent court case and the fact that he's behind bars at the moment all of the others talk about his music career and social life in the present tense (as if he's not behind bars), with nothing at all I could find focusing on the people who claim to have been victimized by him.

That's out of all the articles I could find by Google News so far this year, 24 days to date. Woke, huh?

 

Maybe if you were as good as condescending as you were at making a point? Or maybe, just maybe, I didn't need to extrapolate the racial dynamics of people defending CB to be glad that guys I've looked up to and met aren't dying on the JL hill.

 

I think you mean “if you were as good at making a point as you are at being condescending” but hey I’m sure you’ll get me next time, tiger

And like nah you don’t have to...but you should. Being like “man, I’m glad the guys I looked up to aren’t like THAT” but ignoring the nuances of differences between the two situations is not the complete picture.

 

I didn't catch which company it was as the radio is played over our whole office but there was an advert here in the UK on a national radio station using Rkelly's I believe i can fly

 

Just when I didn't think a new low can be found.

 

Disgusting. Please tell me again how scary it must be to be a man in today's #metoo movement era.

 

y i k e s

 

Chris Brown sold basically the same shirt design back in 2016, connected to another case: Chris Brown Is Now Selling “This B*tch Lyin” T-Shirts - Capital XTRA

That's not to defend him, only to point out that he's recycling something he's done before, and his team is surely watching the media and fan reaction to help better know how to represent him. If there's an obvious relationship to be noted between that reaction and actions by CB, his management, etc, it'd be worth someone mentioning here.

 

Oh dang, I didn't make you mad. What will I do?

I really didn't ignore it as in I just didn't bring it up. I only said "popular music", which last time I checked, was a wide range of people and backgrounds. My point is that whatever bands or artists that were close to Lacey didn't defend him. I'm very very cool with that. And even so, knowing that black artists are more willing to stick up for black men specifically is still depressing. All of it is depressing. It is all bad. So I don't think I need to spell it out further.

 

As a Michael Jackson fan, I absolutely dread this. But I also think it’s essential to finally come to grips with the reality of who he was.

 

Did you doubt it in the past? Seems like something that's been out there for as long as I've been on this Earth.

 

It always seemed kind of dubious with the whole case and people like Macaulay Culkin and Corey’s Feldman coming to Jackson’s side. I don’t know. It’s probably always been denial. I feel like I’ve never heard a fleshed our account of how Michael acted with kids. Either way, it sounds like this will be the definitive account of what he did to children and like I said, seems pretty essential and heartbreaking.

 

Man, I read a big piece years ago that convinced me that at the very least there was serious doubt about all that. Wish I could find it now.

 

Yeah, I know trusting the media is dumb but I could have sworn all the parents came out and admitted these allegations were fake attempts to make money. I'm interested to see what information comes out that either didn't during the very public trial or that was ignored at the time. But I remember the media coverage of MJ and the pop culture surrounding this subject to be very critical of him.

 

Yeah I vaguely remember that from the piece but I can't source it. I don't remember much except that and that I came away from that piece with doubt