A snippet from “Afro-Surrealism and Hip Hop: Decolonizing Black artistic expression”

Prior to the drop of Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a video game journalist remarkably referred to the Miles Morales character jumping backwards off a building as “full of the exaggerated swagger of a black teen.” What does that even mean? This description became a niche internet meme, emphasizing the absurd language used to describe a black body doing normal Spider-Man things. Netizens took on the description and applied it to anything they deemed fit, whether it be to a white teen appropriating black culture or to a black teen doing normal teen things, in the true internet fashion of unserious irony. But it is evident that within this absurd comment lies Miles Morales’ marketability. Somehow and someway, video game designers had to make the new generation superhero evidently black and distinguishable from the SpiderMen before him both inside and outside of the iconic red and blue onesie. Even though players could remember what he looked like before he put the mask on, they had to always be reminded that he’s different from the rest— he’s black. So they made him do an exaggerated backflip, showing us that Morales holds biological swagger located somewhere in the melanin pigments deep within his cells, which makes him ever so different from the various white, non-animated Spider-Men that came before him. If it wasn’t for this “exaggerated swagger of a black teen,” there seems to be no reason why Miles Morales would need to come into existence; to be drawn; to be sold; to be shown to the world; to be alive. His fetishized flesh provides the SpiderMan franchise something fresh and new, something desirable and sellable to this seemingly “post-racial,” “woke” world of which we currently reside. By playing the game as him, they, too, get to have the exaggerated swagger of a black teen.

The strangeness of white-gaze descriptions is not unique to Miles Morales and extends far beyond the SpiderVerse and the world of video games. It is a unique aspect of blackness in the entertainment industry that entrenches black skin and their holders’ lived experiences with a needed and unseen absurdity to accompany it. Black stereotypes sell.

“We have seen all too often minority subjects who perform the very stereotypical assignments that limit them—at times out of compliance, as the result of a process of internalization of the stereotype itself (or identification with it), and at times out of defiance, which we think of as subversion… We have yet to confront the uncomfortable fact that the charismatic work of transforming abject identities into desired and ‘genuine categories often resorts to reinvoking the fetish’... To replace a negative stereotype with a positive one has, of course, been a long-cherished liberal gesture, but the fetishistic structure remains undisturbed, only inversely valued. Part of the limitation of much of the existing criticism of racial stereotypes is that they rely on the critique of the stereotype (as unreal, untrue, or inauthentic), without accounting for the dynamics of identification at work on both sides of the stereotype” (Cheng 2006, 103-104).

The invention and reenforcement of the fetish is no compliment as it comes straight from the colonizers mouth. This is very the reason why Chris in Get Out faces a barrage of fetish-based “compliments” before the evil white people try to take his body and remove his brain. When Jordan Peele and the internet users make a visual mockery of such comments they reveal to us a sinister hyperreal layer to such comments, one that places a price on the black body just as it occurred once before and continues to occur now. The “exaggerated swagger of a black teen” meme itself is an ironic, yet unironic, online social phenomenon; it’s a depiction of Afro-Surrealism in meme form, unintentionally created by a random white video game commentator thinking he was being kindly inclusive and complimentary to our new precious Afro-Latino SpiderMan. The meme users subverted the original intentions of the quote, deeply rooted in black fetishization stemming from what was and is colonialism, reminding us distinctly of European Surrealists’ obsession with the authenticity (and coolness) of “primitive” Africa, and they applied it to places where it did not apply and where there were zero perceived coolness points. The people of the internet took the reins of AfroSurrealism to show that a hyper-fixation on black skin and the stereotyping of it has never left, just took a new stranger form within white liberalism and diversity politics. In this accepted post-racial reality, the value of blackness is misconstrued: “Color-blind and post-racial rhetoric and ideology underpin the notion that the voracious consumption of Black popular culture is a testament to the acceptance of Black people” (Njee 2016, 114). Peele and the netizens know this acceptance is a farce; it's an “eating of,” a consumption of the White falsified reality of Blackness, made specifically tantalizing and pleasurable for their own palate and enjoyment. Through this fetishization and stereotyping they can see their own colonial creation, love it and justify violence against it. It’s so weird, so wicked, that it’s laughable. The true AfroSurrealist makes a mockery of it.

So when Travis Scott, the internet meme and the rapper, spoon-digs himself into a wannabe (Afro)Surrealist expression of his black artistry, the true AfroSurrealist know it’s just white-gaze marketing.

Throughout his career, Travis has relied upon psychedelic imagery and absurdity for his artistic expression. He fears not to discuss his obscene drug usage to elicit a sense of extravagance around it, and around his lifestyle as a whole. In “Upper Echelon” on his first mixtape, Owl Pharaoh, he chants some variation of “We so high, I’m upper echelon” at least eight times, causing the line to become so encrypted in the listeners brain that they stop asking themselves What does that even mean? solely because “It’s Lit.” And that is the appeal of Mr. Webster— he is a black man who is unapologetically rich, cool, lit, full of rage, catchy, and casually addicted to both drugs and bad L.A. bitches who appropriate black culture.

In the “Antidote” music video, a fat blunt never leaves Mr. Webster’s hand as he is surrounded by attractive women and random characters, including but not limited to a priest, an elderly clown, and a white man being arrested by cops. All of these disjointed characters just so happen to be decorated by neon green clothing. What does that even mean? And a single-eyed painting moves and contorts as Travis lazily raps through heavy autotune, “Anything can happen at the night show.” For a moment, it truly seems that way. Astroworld is the name of this night show, this world he has created for himself and for his audience to partake in. Here, the possibilities seem endless.

I once thought an AfroSurrealist reading of Travis’ expressionism could be done, but that ambient Travis Scott AfroSurrealism can only be witnessed briefly and on the surface. Perchance the party-goer priest is an attempt to deconstruct the false reality of purity within western religion. Perchance when he carries us on the whimsical wings of a transcendent beat while rapping, “Who’s that creepin’ through my window,” on “5% TINT” he juxtaposes the DuBoisian double-consciousness of existing through two eyes, your own and the white ones, with the invasive nature of (black) fame (Travis Scott 2018, 3:10). Or perchance when he raps, “I’m overboard and I’m over impatient,” he falls in line with D. Scot Miller’s need for “excess” within AfroSurrealism (Travis Scott 2015, 3:40; Miller 2009; 116).

But what remains after my fangirl-induced attempt to create a pundit out of Travis is that, as an artist, he has created a Black God of himself which extends its arms to white adoration and money; Travis has uniquely constructed an alternate world for his fans to partake in— a world that supersedes well beyond whatever Astroworld is and thoroughly entangles itself with his identity as a black artist in America. Or perhaps the aspect of his identity he decides to show us. He’s strangely stingy on Instagram, mysteriously tends to hide his face in photos, and, along with his baby mother, at the time of me writing this, refuses to show the newest KarJenner heir to the world. His world solely consists only of the warped depiction of reality within his musical identity (and the occasional scandal), both in the literal sense and the mystical one. He is one with his money, his rage, his drug use, and with the mountain prop stained by a hallucinatory swirl that he uses in his most recent set designs. There’s a roller coaster in the middle of his concert hall! So it seems like in his world things don’t go the way they should, and yet they do. Things are going exactly the way they should… under the white man’s perception of black reality, of course. His world is solely defined by its excess and unattested rage: “I’m overboard and I'm over-impatient.” This is exactly how they said we were. At its core, Travis’ world and his fan’s affinity for it, their consumption of it, relies heavily on the stereotypes of black male rage and black male coolness for it to thrive: “The party never ends // In a motel laying with my sins // I’m tryna get revenge,” the late Juice WRLD sings on “NO BYSTANDERS” as Scott’s featuring artist. This Astroworld feels more like an anger-filled living hell and he opens the door to outsiders to spectate that exaggerated swagger of a black artist— willful re-colonialism.

So when Travis chants, “We so high, I’m upper echelon,” Scott depends on his ability to combat his racial positioning with the coolness of his drug usage, with his inability and lack of desire to control himself. This is essentially what he sells as an artist. His hedonistic excess and overboard-ness is what allows him to be upper echelon, both in the song and in his artistic expression. It’s almost like he his perpetually inches away from grasping the reins of understanding that this is sick and twisted, but then he loses his grip and becomes grounded in the pretty pretty swirl-ly swirls of Hip Hop blood money. This black never-ending party of capitalistic drug-induced dreams is what his fans want a taste of and Travis willfully gives it to then while taking a bite out of it, too. He feeds the beast of white supremacy that constructs the black male artist as a never ending angry, violent, hyper-sexual, drug addicted, and exotic being— the hands of white supremacy giveth some money with the right hand and taketh some dignity with the left. And it is to much of the unknowing Internet AfroSurrealist’s attention that Travis Scott plays into the commodification of a Blackness he does not own, nor truly claim. The Reddit users are asking each other why the majority of his fans are white or hispanic, to which one answered, “Travis Scott's whole ‘rager’ aesthetic tends to attract more suburban white teens.” Understanding this exact “postcolonial” and “post racial” fetishization of a rage-filled aspect of black culture, within Hip Hop specifically, helps us understand the pervasive whiteness of Scott’s demographic:

“[Rap music] is the perfect paradigm of colonialism… We think of rap music as a little third world country that young White consumers are able to go to and take out of it whatever they want. We would have to acknowledge that what young White consumers, primarily male, often times suburban, most got energized by in rap music was misogyny, obscenity, [and] therefore...rap came to make the largest sum of money” (Hooks 2006, 18).

Though I am personally hesitant to proclaim rap as colonial within and of itself, in Travis’ Astroworld you definitely can get a taste of Blackness for fun and hop right back out of the mosh pit to shame it. Rinse and repeat.

Travis, unabashedly, interacts with his seemingly AfroSurreal world the same way his fans do. In an Ebro in the Morning interview following the Ferguson police murder of Mike Brown in 2014, Mr. Webster said,

“I’m kind of angry that so many Black people are acting like fake activists. It’s like publicity and we’re still talking about this. I’m not saying Mike Brown was an evil person. I’m not saying he was perfect either. I’m not saying he deserved to get killed, but I’m not saying that he didn’t deserve to pay for the consequences he probably inflicted… That’s what’s wrong with Black people and culture in general. Once something happens, no one knows how to move on without causing a disruption.”

This pains me and burns me in the fire of being a fan of this man, so much so that I just can’t help but laugh at the lack of awareness this comment holds. Travis is one hypocrite to condemn disruption when that is precisely what he used to propel himself into stardom. He has a taste of that very disruption that black movements perpetuate: “No security touches a Travis Scott fan, bro,” he yelled at one of his concerts. Then he condemns it. Rinse and repeat. Oh, the horror of having to appeal to a white audience and still having to perpetuate black stereotypes (when its beneficial)!

Just a year after this comment Travis released “Pray 4 Love” featuring Canadian artist, The Weeknd, where he, in true Hip Hop and AfroSurrealist fashion, samples a track from 1964, “Ask the Lonely” by Four Tops. This was very likely in response to the backlash he faced when making those tone deaf comments in 2015. And he, as of 2020, believes himself to be an agent of the Black Lives Matter Movement. But his efforts have yet to be believed by the real AfroSurrealists who hold the keys to the memes on Twitter.

When he once got on stage during a performance of his 2016 hit, “Goosebumps,” he grabbed his mic stand and opened his mouth wider than I have ever seen any human being open their mouth. As he waved the mic stand back and forth over his head, digital flames engulfed the stage screen behind him. This almost inhumane imagery certainly became one of the biggest memes of the year, challenged only by the most formidable opponents— Harambe and “Ooga Booga” Spongebob. The irony of the other memes in circulation at the time is rather uncanny. As he floated around the internet along with other black caricatures, Travis Scott fell at the feet of AfroSurrealist memeification. They saw his utilization of black stereotyping and black Surrealism, within stage raging for fame and surface-level systemic disruption, and made fun of him for it. They made a mockery of him.

Now, this was an act of decolonization in music and black artistic identity. The meme users decided they would highlight the hyperreality of the fetishization and commodification of this madness created for teenage white boys, comparing Scott’s rage to children being left alone in a classroom. That’s the type of people the AfroSurrealist Memers believed Scott made music for. He was a puppet of white supremacy who had never realized the hyperreality of black stereotyping and the commodification of it, despite all his attempts to make it seem as if he did— he was a fraud, if you will. So when Travis Scott tweeted, “Bought my fam a crib for Christmas. Use to sleep on floors. Now we walk on marble,” a user responded with “nigga u was in jack and jill.” This joke reveals Scott’s false reclamation of the very Blackness he uses to build his precious Astroworld. Travis is not and never was a poor black man who “might clip a sarge” in the name of police brutality, as he confidently claims he would. He just makes desperate attempts at encompassing the spirit of AfroSurrealism to sell it to angry white boys looking for an outlet for their own unattested rage. And the jokes about him reveal the intentions behind actual AfroSurrealism: in order to truly decolonize, we cannot use colonialist values to depict Blackness expressionism for profit, at all.

Race is complex and intertwined with class; the fetish for the excessive, rich black rapper is not enough to save us from the deep waters of immortal colonialism. We are going to need more than Travis Scott inhaling weed smoke and regurgitating it back into the atmosphere just as he does with black stereotyping, while claiming to be “highest in the room… [with] the Midas Touch.” The goal of AfroSurrealism was never to leave the structure undisturbed and inverted, with rich and fraudulent black people exploiting black bodies, lives, experiences, and realities for their own profit and marketability.

That’s just a minstrel show.

art credit: galkush, ironically this artist also made a piece of yelling travis as a symbolization of the rage felt during blm protests. do what you wish with the hilarity of that.