Noname - Blaxploitation

Blaxploitation is the term used for the 70s B-films that followed black characters as their leads. It is a complicated term that has sparked wide controversy because while some people praise them for putting black characters as the heroes of the film for the first time, they are also criticized for repeating dangerous stereotypes of black culture.

The Chicago musician Noname takes the term to name one of the most political tracks in her new album. Blaxploitation is a song with many remarks about black culture and black identities, from the tongue-twisting first verse that celebrates the existence of Penny Proud, a cartoon character with whom black girls can really identify, to pondering how much of laziness and how much hypocrisy is social fighters that still consume products from companies that support hate speech (like Chick-fil-A, a restaurant that donated millions to anti-LGBT organizations).

But the central point of the song comes when she sings "Write a think piece in the rap song, the new age covenant", making clear that she is comparing modern rap to blaxploitation films. While some of the most powerful musicians nowadays are black rappers, she also wonders if, like in the 70s films, there might be a toxic reproduction of black sterotypes in rap music, with the excessive violence, drug culture, money glorification and gendered sexual behaviors as central topics of most of the rap lyrics.

But Fatimah Warner (Noname's real name), is never accusative, she's rather throwing questions in the table for further discussion. On the other hand, she points, there's the risk of softening down the tone in order to blend with the white discourse, (as some late Blaxploitation films did), and then she points black hipsters that move to white neighborhood and try to erase any connection to their conflictive past and the problematic sides of their black identity, "When we cool, they cool. we die as coon", she sings as she remembers that race relations are still one of the biggest problems in the US.

The use of a funky base, which was an iconic element of the music in Blaxploitation films, and the use of some lines of two films of that trend, come to make the message clearer: race politics are still an issue to resolve and having Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar at the top of the charts doesn't mean that equality has been reached. Noname might not have the answers but she is ready to be that uncomfortable pebble on the shoe that keeps asking the hard questions.