I’m old enough to remember when MTV played nothing but music videos. I also remember that none of the artist airing in 1981 – 1982 looked like me. They were all white!
Even back then as a pre-teen I understood that the mother fuckers running the show at MTV were idiots! The fact that they were not playing any R&B music was crazy to me. No Earth, Wind and Fire, no Kool and the Gang and no Rick mother fucking James!… Get the fuck outta here!
There was only one video in MTV’s rotation that got me to stop everything I was doing, and that was Rapture, by Blondie. Don’t get it fucked up, Blondie was no MC Sha-Rock, or Queen Lisa Lee, but there she was on TV, a white bitch repping my Culture. It was all there, laid out in plain sight for the world to see but only the initiated understood the significance of the symbols flashing across the screen.
Some people saw a dude standing behind two record players,
I saw a DJ ready to rock the ones and twos.
Some people saw a dude vandalizing a wall with graffiti.
I saw artist on par with Michaelangelo blessing our optic nerves.
And then, right around the 1 minute and 56 second mark I witnessed this white woman speak in our sacred language. You could tell that it wasn’t her native tongue, crude… yet understandable to the initiated. Blondie had completely embraced the Culture and the Culture had embraced her back.
“Fab5Freddy Told Me Everybody’s Fly,
DJ’s Spinning I said, My My,
Flash Is Fast Flash Is Cool…”
-BLONDIE, Rapture
Her words, bestowing praise upon two young Gods.
Yet and still I wondered if J.J. Jackson was the only black person working at MTV. I bought this up to my old head, who told me to be patient. “White people have to make sure that they have total control over anything new. Once they believe they have it mastered they’ll allow a few niggers to get some scraps.”
That statement became prophetic. They eventually allowed a nigga inside, but little did they know that this nigga was a king!
Michael Joseph Jackson, AKA the King Of Pop became the brother that opened the doors of MTV for Foundational Black Americans. The album, Thriller was embraced by the entire Earth and MTV would have been insane to not give it any play. For those to young to comprehend how huge of an event Michael Jackson’s video for Thriller was, MTV played that mother fucker every 4 hours. I truly believe Michael Jackson’s, Thriller did more for MTV than MTV did for Michael Jackson. At it’s height, Thriller was selling a mind boggling one million copies weekly. That’s every single week!
Now imagine If MJ would have said “Fuck MTV, you don’t want to work with blacks we don’t want to work with you.” MJ then decides to march his ass over to BET and give them exclusive rights to air his music videos.
GAME CHANGED!
“You won’t be wealthy, but you can eat very well off of just your people.”
–MAMA TESSIE
