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it is one thing to have your own style, your own flare, the thing that makes you unique. it is *not* okay to not study the people who laid the groundwork for you to be able to do what you do.
when Ella Mai was asked what her top 3 Aretha Franklin songs were and she didn’t have an answer, i knew *then* that something was shifting. and that shift wasn’t a good one.
if you want to be good at and perfect your *craft*, you *have* to know where that craft started, who helped create it, how it has functioned and shifted as time went on.
does that mean you, in 2020, will make music that sounds exactly like Aretha’s? prolly not. it *does* mean that you have been influenced by one of the pillars of your craft because you studied them. and you studied them because you cared enough about your craft to do so.
i am very scared of the day we all accept it’s okay to participate in a craft we haven’t studied. 
Black people have always been part of *lineage*. that’s part of what makes us who we are, and what makes our art what it is.
if we decide to opt out of the genealogy of our respective crafts, we are really choosing to undo the entire craft itself.
if we decide to opt out of the genealogy of our respective crafts, we are really choosing to undo the entire craft itself.
this. ‘cause all that said to me was “erasure is okay.” and as someone who gets erased from a few different convos, lol, nah. https://twitter.com/rufusthefunky1/status/1305374205169500160
