Mere Mortals

"You got knocked the kcuf out!" - Chris Tucker as Smokey in "Friday"
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Being an entertainer has to be quite the auspicious lifestyle. Capitalizing on people's fantasies seems like a good idea, but where does the public's lust for the unreal end & the artist's actuality begin. Contrary to popular belief, celebrity doesn't ostracize one from the real world. Nor does it give "real" people an excuse for existing in some uncanny, alternate universe just because they're fans of their "art".

Entertainment is meant to appease the part of our brain that becomes racked with the doldrums of everyday life. We spend our hard-earned money to pretend we don't have mouths to feed & bills to pay. That doesn't mean I have to succumb to the ridiculous nature of the beast.

Or does it?

One can speculate for days on end as to exactly why 50 cent & Rick Ross hate/enamor each other so much. Their "feud" has become very open, & has transgressed far beyond the limits of simply making songs. It has spilled out into their personal lives at such a rate that some sort of physical altercation is seemingly inevitable. What was once a silly rap dude conflict has begun pulling relatives into the fray on the world's most public of forums, the Internet. For the most part, such behavior on both of their parts, in the real world, would have gotten one, if not both of them killed in the street.

Is their career the reason for the conflict, or is conflict the reason for their career? Life imitates art, indeed. & vice versa.

All rumor mill wind-blowing aside, Chris Brown beat up his girlfriend Rihanna. So what? It happens everyday, in all classes & races & ethnicities. The point of interest should be in the public's reaction, not Brown's reaction to whatever made him lose his cool in the first place. Just because he can sing & dance, & teenage girls think he's "sooooo kah-yoot" doesn't mean that he doesn't put his pants on one leg at a time. Although, judging by his flipping & spinning antics, he may just slide across the bed into the awaiting jeans, but I digress. He's apparently achieved super-human status & can do no wrong according to the consensus. As soon as he makes a mistake (as humans often do), he's knocked from his pedestal into the jaws of the vicious everyman. Why was he up there so high in the first place? He's a regular guy, with a couple of attributes that make him slightly more interesting than the garbage man.

Just because one sings a love song doesn't mean they know how to love. Just as one who knows how to love isn't necessarily qualified to make a song about it.

Suge Knight has supposedly received another beatdown over the weekend at the hands of someone who most folks know nothing about. Who won or lost is relative to nothing. Not to mention that I couldn't care any less without being dead. He spent the better part of a 15 year stint as a music mogul building a menacing reputation as the wrong aggin to kcuf with. To this day, rumors still swirl of his cigar scented tirades & backhand slapping of his artists. Now, Suge is a shell of the former "boss" he once was, reviled & revered at the same time. All that remains is ruin & myth. Was he the domestic terrorist the world perceived him to be, or did we buy into his uberbad guy image for the sake of needing one to love? The dismembering of his business venture(s) caused his facade to be broken, & in a matter of years his persona went from unapproachable to unnecessary. Maybe all the rhetoric about himself went to his head, but what normal person wouldn't thrive from such conspiracies? Most men would, & once the nectar is tasted, few things are sweeter.

Is he now getting attacked because he's been weakened, or was he always (more or less) weak with no one willing to attack?

All genres of this industry are susceptible to the same plague of superheroitis, & we, as spectators, lose focus that these are just characters who parade for us & broadcast their lives for money. Mere mortals, nothing more, nothing less. I'm not sure if I'd allow myself to be the bull's eye of such scrutiny.

But then again, for the right price, I might cut off my thumb on YouTube.