Two nights ago, all was going swell for Nicki Minaj.
“Real hip-hop lovers,” some pioneering writers from hip-hop’s golden ‘90s, were praise-tweeting her flow on her new single “Lookin’ A** Ni**a.” Likened to a rap version of TLC’s “No Scrubs,” the single was redemption in many folks’ eyes, a return, if you will, to her roots as a true rapper and not more commercial exploits that include her not-so-distant stint as an American Idol judge.
Kory Grow’s February 12 Rollingstone.com post, “Nicki Minaj pulls out the big guns for ‘Lookin Ass N—a’ clip,” celebrated her “machine-gun verses” as well as pointed out her firing on an unwanted male admirer with two guns in the accompanying video on WorldStarHipHop. She was returning to her gritty roots, some raved. With her song appearing on Young Money’s forthcoming compilation Rise of an Empire along with Lil Wayne and Drake, she was on fire but was in need of no water.
What a difference a day makes. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, even The Wall Street Journal exploded when album art for the single was revealed featuring the iconic photo of Malcolm X holding a gun as he peeped beyond the curtains of his window for any sign of trouble.
Just like that, all the air that shot her sky high had dissipated. How could she not know that the n-word slapped on this piece of history, along with a video where she is scantily-clad, did not scream “I am Malcolm X!?”
But what of the iconic photo itself? When did it creep into our consciousness? Where did it come from? Most point to articles in Life and Ebony magazines.
Life’s March 20, 1964 article “The Ominous Malcolm X Exits from the Muslims” does not include that particular image, however. In the September 1964 issue of Ebony, a similar photo accompanies Hans J. Massaquoi’s “Mystery of Malcom X: Fired Black Muslim denounces cult, vows to take part in rights revolution” story but it is not the photo.
“It was the hardest photo to track down in any official capacity,” says Professor Zaheer Ali, who served as project manager of The Malcolm X Project at Columbia University under esteemed scholar Manning Marable, who also wrote the controversial 2011 book, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, released a week after his death. More than likely, Ali concludes, the photo comes from the Ebony shoot.
If that is true, how it got into circulation is a mystery. And who shot it is not easily answered either. But like many leaders, including President Abraham Lincoln and Marcus Garvey, Malcolm knew the importance of his image. “Malcolm was very conscious of how he was photographed, and even staged photographs [to be] very purposeful in his visual representation,” Ali notes.
This is confirmed by Eve Arnold, whom Life assigned to photograph the one-time Nation of Islam leader. According to Arnold, whose 1961 photos can be seen on a site for Life, Malcolm was very aware of his image. “I am always delighted by the manipulation that goes on between a subject and photographer when the subject knows about the camera and how it can best be used to his advantage,” she is quoted. “Malcolm was brilliant in this silent collaboration.” She even recalls him arranging shots himself and finding her subjects to photograph.
So, in this sense, Minaj and the revered leader share the manipulation of their images in common, if not the purpose. Whereas Minaj has misappropriated that image, which is usually interpreted as Malcolm either protecting his family from harm or himself from those who wanted to kill him, others, mainly KRS-One for his classic 1988 album By All Means Necessary, have used it successfully. In the 1990s, in New York City especially, that image could be found on posters and t-shirts and was one highly embraced by the hip-hop community.
Interestingly, it is an image missing from the official Malcolm X site, which chooses to present photos that show the leader without guns.
Like her mentor/Young Money Entertainment head Lil Wayne, who was under fire last year for his questionable lyric “beat that p***y up like Emmett Till” for a remix of fellow rapper Future’s single “Karate Chop Remix,” Minaj also finds herself in hot water.
On Instagram, Minaj shot back, “What seems to be the issue now? Do you have a problem with me referring to the people Malcolm X was ready to pull his gun out on as Lookin A** Ni***z? Well, I apologize. That was never the official artwork nor is this an official single. This is a conversation. Not a single.” Later on in the post, she does manage to “apologize to the Malcolm X estate if the meaning of the photo was misconstrued.”
Who is to really blame for such unfortunate but frequent occurrences? We are in Black History Month, which in recent years has become popular to denounce. Even Goldie Taylor did a post here for her popular #BreakingBlack column titled “I hate Black History Month.” And while yes, we all want the contributions of African-Americans to be interwoven into the mainstream all year-round, perhaps some of our more prominent voices are going about it the wrong way. Maybe the younger generation is hearing a disdain for African-American history and internalizing that and not the intended message that these contributions are a part of overall American history.
When Dr. Carter G. Woodson started Negro History Week, which he selected for the close proximity of President Lincoln and Frederick Douglass’s birthday, in 1926, he envisioned a time in which African-American contributions would be readily acknowledged by all. That history and knowledge was spread in black spaces by black people mainly throughout the South for decades before President Ford acknowledged what had become known as Black History Week in 1975. The next year, the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH), which Dr. Woodson founded as the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915, expanded it to Black History Month and Ford, in turn, issued an official observance of the month. So, no, nobody gave us February for Black History Month because it is the shortest month of the year.
While it’s been easy for many of us to come out against Nicki Minaj for this horrific misappropriation of Malcolm X, in the end, the sad truth is that Black History Month is still an important gateway to educate youth and others about the valuable contributions of African-Americans to the history of this nation — and world, really. Obviously Minaj’s actions demonstrate that an ongoing discussion is missing.
“History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals,” Malcolm once said. “A race of people is like an individual man; until it uses its own talent, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.”
Nicki Minaj’s latest outrage is a wake-up call. But the all-important question remains: Will we heed it?