Black Music Month 2023: The Worst Part

The hardest part was listening to so many hours of free jazz; the worst part was reading two different books about the same two murders, and spending so much time in the mindset of cops.

Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls & Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations by the Detective Who Solved Both Cases by Greg Kading 

Labyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records' Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal by Randall Sullivan

Those subtitles get out of hand.

I was a little irritated with the hero cop narrative in Kading's book, which I read first. I just re-read the reviews I left for both books, and I had put a line in there about how only cops minimize the Rampart scandal. That was because as I was reading it, I kept remembering a former classmate and police officer telling me how overblown it was, and it was just a handful of bad apples. Very familiar.

Sullivan was so much worse.

To be fair, he was much more willing to admit corruption, but all of it was the fault of the increased recruitment of Black and Latinx officers (not said so nicely). That was not just the source of all the corrupt cops, but was also because they lowered the standards so they even could have officers of color. And then that liberal thinking gave them a Black chief of police!

I know the corruption of white police officers became a lot easier to find after we started having video cameras everywhere, but that doesn't make it new.

The overt racism was astonishing. It's hard to tell how much of that comes from the detective, Russell Poole, or the author, Randall Sullivan. I guess they're a good match. There is just such enormous contempt for everyone who is not white, as well as a few white people who are too friendly with those others. There are some fairly contemptible people in it too, with some pretty terrible actions, but the book just becomes a work of racism, and an ode to Poole. Multiple sections start with quotes about how great he is, though they seem to largely relate to his time at the academy, giving the impression that maybe he peaked there, and no one (except Sullivan) had anything to say after the regular evaluations.

I have two more things to say about LAbyrinth. 

1. It is so thoroughly steeped in dominator culture that it is absolutely perfect that in the related movie Poole is played by Johnny Depp, who had a powerful influence on abusers suing their victims and successfully exploiting power.
2. I recently realized that I had another book by Sullivan on my reading list. It was set in Oregon and sounded interesting, but being familiar now with his writing and his racism, it can't possibly be interesting enough.

Otherwise, the conclusions of the books are pretty similar. Sullivan -- who is more likely to see weird conspiracy -- does suggest that one of the initial conflicts that played a key role in both murders may have been a setup. It's not impossible, but it doesn't really go along with the level of planning on everything else.

My overall impression from those books is yes, defund the police! The sooner the better!

But I already leaned that way.

I could leave it at that, but there were some other thoughts, and they came more into focus recently.

One of the interesting things in reading about Suge Knight and Death Row Records is that it seems that everyone eventually wanted out. Some made it out more successfully than others, but that's what they all wanted. As much as Knight could promise in terms of safety and wealth and success, those promises kept falling through, for multiple reasons.

There is a lot of violence -- some of it mind-numbingly stupid -- and that's not really a surprise. "Gangster" rap; it's right there in the title! But does it have to be that way?

That leads to the other thing I as thinking about.

I also watched Marley, a 2012 documentary about Bob Marley.

After, my sisters asked me if he were a pig. 

Well, he certainly wasn't a police officer.

They meant if he was a cheater, a not uncommon failing with professional musicians. I don't really know how to answer.

He did sleep with other women. Rita knew about them, but the other women did not always know about her. 

One of them seems to have been young, and one he started out by calling her "ugly" for having treated hair... like is this early negging? There are ways in which he isn't too likable, and he doesn't seem to have been the best father.

But also his father seduced Bob's much younger mother, and the mother of the half-sister he only found out about accidentally, and he wasn't really there for either of them.

Bob was shunned for being mixed, and then his mother moved to the States, which you would think was mainly for greater financial opportunity but it turns out there was also horrific political violence in Trenchtown. It was like gang violence, but going for elected positions rather than positions that are officially criminal. And even though he did not choose a side, just for wanting the perform a benefit concert and try and do some good he got shot.

Who am I to judge him?

He was a person. Despite a hard beginning he left an impression. He had faults (don't we all), but it is easy to forget how hard life can be, and how much we can be influenced by the world around us, often without even noticing.

So, no, I would not describe him as chaste or monogamous, but he wouldn't expect me to.