"Crack Music" Kanye West 

So the Wakandan/Hotep soundtrack by Kanye helps us understand why Hip-Hop is international. Check the references, the history lesson, the shout out to a prior generation, and even the specifics of the DMV.  I call it Wakandan Hotep, because it discusses portions of black history, things that could be considered conspiracy theories, and manages to stay funky.  It is undeniably black, but not suite wearing Obama years or Ivy League regulated.  It is not trying to be good enuff.  People love it.  

Kanye West is  at least a Wakandan and when he says that crazy shit that makes social media go off, he is probably more like a Hotep.  For those who don't know Hotep, it is a pejorative term used to describe folks who have embraced African American or Afrocentric culture to a detriment.  Kanye complicates things because he steps outside of the boundaries of the intellectual by simply being a hip-hop artist. Black popular music is the intellectual not intellectual.  The limit of Hotep crazy is the boundary where the Afrocentric intellectual urge blurs into mysticism, conspiracy, and the unprovable.   Kanye makes it even more confusing because at times he sometimes appears to be renouncing the fundamentals of black centered thought, or even acts like he doesn't know them.  You might sleep on him and easily regulate him to the ridiculous.

To say it again with more depth, Hotep, as one friend put it, is a term used to describe those who embrace African culture and nationalism indiscriminately and accept the patriarchy, homophobia, and misogyny of African culture.  Within circles of the black left it is simply a more sophisticated way to talk about black Fanaticism that heads towards cult.  The Right has no distinction for Hotep and probably could care less-black as hurled from the Right bears little nuance or distinction.  Within the realm of the black left, the term distances and attempts to distinguish a less progressive blackness from a more important one.

If we go back in history a bit, one could cite Baldwin's explanation for not joining the Nation of Islam in The Fire Next Time as an example of the response very similar to the one reserved for Hoteps.  In that work, the Nation serves as a predecessor to the world of Hoteps with their  patriarchy, space ships(mother plane), Elijah Muhammad's Morman like relationships with young women within the organization, and the rhetoric of calling the white man the devil.  Hoteps can easily be understood as Nation of Islam with Afrocentrism and a quest towards Egypt replacing Islam.  

Baldwin, a writer operating on the platform of Western culture gives an alternative perspective on the fanaticism of the black by centering himself in the connection with those everyday black folks who respond to the fanaticism of their culture, as compared to the critique of it.   He is clear that Elijah Muhammad like the hustler, pimp, and preacher is not to be distinguished by his or her beliefs, but by a wisdom, perhaps a crooked one, that hones in on the isolation and abandonment African-Americans experience as a result of their treatment by society.  This isolation is the cause that precedes the fanaticism.    In other words, fanaticism is an extension of the environmental conditions. Some may disagree and hit the social books or history, but the point here is Baldwin's analysis, stated in a Baldwin way as matter of fact, plain, and terribly human.  Western colonial expansion is riddled with fanaticism.  Morman fanaticism and success seem close to inseparable.  Manifest Destiny, gold rushes, the Salem Witch Trials at the root of American Puritanism and intellectualism are not simply examples of anomalies in history, but somehow linked to the might and power used to conquer the world.  Many will argue the progress' relationship with fanaticism is insignificant; but the conquering of the New World seems impossible without fanaticism.  The dysfunction, lies, and contradictions in colonialism and the empire are fancy words for a fanaticism that though political in the end is similar to religion.  A Hotep is politically incorrect black within the confines of black culture.  That they are powerless in relationship to the larger society:  do not hire people, or pay people less, or amass weapons of mass destruction, seems irrelevant; but is in truth the heart of their symbolism.  They are symbol of the black poor in intellectual ideas.

In his brilliance Baldwin uses the phrase, "whose little boy are you" spoken to him by a preacher, as a sign of a sophisticated knowledge about the human spirit that the preacher, hustler,  and pimp, use to connect with the trauma of our predicament here.  That they pimp and pivot on the isolation and head towards a hope doused in crime, religious fanaticism, or the roots of pleasure, is somewhat beside the point.   Baldwin's point is  beautiful, but also tragic, because his own inability to convert leaves him isolated.  Baldwin knows the little boy, because he is the little boy.  Baldwin centers his critique in his human connection with those who respond to the hotepist call.  He is more rooted in his position as the little boy as compared to the one who will bring down the dragon.

It must also be said that Baldiwn's isolation and loneliness also make him the Peter Pan, the little boy forever with his quest for humanity and the love he speaks about that is difficult and seemingly impossible.  In this way Baldwin is simply Baldwin, bound to black folks, but yet, unbound by ideology.   In this way Baldwin transcends race in a way that a Hotep or Wakandan cannot; but still the transcendence and longevity of his work and image are the result of entering the mythic realm of the writer in Western culture.  Because Baldwin was gay, activist, brilliant, beautiful and writer, he can function as the perfect symbol of the transcendence of race and ideology; but Baldwin knew everyone couldn't do that.  He knew the dynamics of trauma.  That is why he didn't talk about how fanatical folks were, and instead gave us the acknowledgement of trauma pimped from the outside in a statement like, "Whose little boy are you?"

Raised as a  preacher's son and in the Church, Baldwin does not revert to testimony because he knew there was little in the world more fanatical than a black Christian with their aspirations, materialism, and embrace of the larger society's cultural values and norms.  In the end fanaticism has power dynamics just like everything else named or categorized, which brings us back to Hoteps whose true sin may be their application of knowledge to the fanaticism of white supremacy and the contradictions of white power.   

No matter how noble the Hotep take down is, the power to do such is a question of the powerless position of African Americans.  No doubt Islamic fanatics or even men, such as Trump, are not so susceptible to critiques.  In truth, another extension of black powerlessness is the pressure to be right.  But right is difficult.  If one wants to be right, merely join a group powerful enough to exert a right that is backed by money, power, and armies.  Successful blacks have done this better than most in the great dispersal.

The term Hotep represents an evolution of naming within the black community.  Safe to say at this point in time some of us  have never been that little boy or girl.  If Baldwin connected with the preacher and those folks who found the warmth and, by extension the message irresistible, we have progressed to the  point where many will publicly renounce the moment where they responded to such energy as a sin of sorts.  No doubt, the Judeo-Christian tradition is still within us.  A Hotep could be a young fanatical church goer, but there is no name for them, except young-fanatical church goer.  In this regard the term represents a new level of separation within the ranks of black folks.  We are certain of little, but have decided to name a recognizable insanity amongst us, as though the trauma and disconnect fostered by the society in predictable numbers for blacks is not predictable at all, but a matter of individual will, intelligence, and power over ones fate.

The problem would not be so serious if  one cannot imagine the level of nuance applied to crazy ass culturally politicized niggas the term suggests.  To recognize a Hotep one must know something about the black.  One must have a reference point within the underground sub-culture, have read some books, or been to the Odunde festival.  Maybe Trump and White Nationalism are the Hoteps of white culture, but a Hotep couldn't be president of an HBCU, the NAACP, or any reputable black organization.   To put it metaphorically, Hotep is like White Nationalist who are not homophobic, patriarchical, or mysogynist, having a term for other white nationalist who are.  

But back to Kanye.  Serious Hoteps and Wakandans kill it in the second generation.  For it is the second generation that moves beyond the veil of fanaticism and actually moves in this world, but understands other worlds.  Some of the second generation Hoteps and Wakandans are bound to operate like immigrants from another country. Kanye's lineage comes from his mother Donda West who was an English Professor before resigning to become his manager.  She was also a Fullbright Scholar who studied in Nanjing China, and took Kanye there.  I have heard a few stories  about her and talk about the stories of young Kanye coming up.  Donda knew the literature and culture, which is how we get at "Crack Music's" ability to capture the arc of black trauma times and remain funky.  Kanye is not the typical wanna be rapper doused in drugs and gun violence; for that we can thank his Wakandan/Hotep lineage.  

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I'm not convinced Kanye West is crazy.  Or maybe, to avoid additional drama, I will add any crazier than the rest of us.  Granted, I wouldn't be caught dead in the White House now, but I probably wouldn't have gone during the Obama years either.  I could cite drone strikes or Libya, but that might sound too political.  Maybe I just didn't want to go.  Most likely it's irrelevant.  I wouldn't get invited anyway.