Celebrity, you really don't know how powerful you are or how powerful those who follow you could be, because if you knew, you wouldn't be so quick to take those offers (those toys in your Happy Meal--Thanks Kanye--we didn't forget)!
The most powerful voices we have heard in rap songs, television interviews, and on stages around the world were also given deals they couldn't refuse that did just what they were supposed to do, silence them! Those, who were too smart for that, mentally abused to where they can't think straight or worse given powerful drugs and/or therapy that attack their individuality.
You remember the radical voices, the entertainers who caused us to think from the 60s. Look at them today, where are they? Alive but not living out their true calling, dead with no one left behind as powerful as they, too busy, too old, too high, too strange, too something that they are useless!
The movers and shakers moved us to use our critical thinking skills and motivated us not to put up with the things we had been putting up with for decades! From establishments stealing from us to questioning many epidemics in our communities, we were empowered and were empowering others. Yet, that One — a chosen one—a celebrity you admired stopped speaking the kind of truth that liberated you! That One started speaking like everyone else with some watered down speeches—things you already knew! You said to yourself, "What happened? Who is this person? Someone or a group got to him! She is a sell out, he is a fool!" You weren't looking for information you could get anywhere, you were looking for the secrets, the secrets that would pull back the veil and expose the how-to in any area of your life you could fix!
Big businesses didn't want you to get independent education and professional development for free, grow independently spiritually, compete with a team behind you that supports your vision, buy their businesses, take their consumers, wake people up to their shady and useless systems/operations, bankrupt them, cause people to protest, or to set captives free! Those once so powerful voices, (modern day freedom fighters) who gained momentum, were slowed down or even halted right before our eyes!
What is safe for those who feel threatened is to take you back to a time when people were permitted to make great strides and changes economically, spiritually, mentally, and physically by design and when society least expected it. What is safe for the establishment is to give a rapper a movie deal, a television series, a cosmetic line, a clothing line, offer an athlete a business where he sells or invests in his favorite product, a musician an opportunity to build something with his or her family...but what isn't safe is to allow a powerful voice to sit idle. What will make an owner, investors, a manager, or a supervisor nervous is when you question system/process and uncover their lies and false promises.
They silenced many of the most powerful voices these recent decades with movie deals, political opportunities, nonessential business partnerships, property (40 plus acres and a mule), exotic vacation locations and animals, and promised jail releases for their family members and friends or even themselves! They were set up, then told to shut up. The rebellious ones experienced much losses to where they gave in, "Okay I'll stop! I'll quit! I won't say that anymore..." said the once great entertainer to now the frightened and helpless one who doesn't want to be a has-been. Those same powerful voices used visuals in their videos, paintings, and elsewhere to tell us what happened--the hidden hand had defeated them--another soul captured by the children of darkness!
What makes some cowardly celebrities so desperate is when they have grown accustomed to their cushy lifestyles. Without notice they are under pressure to pay this one and that one or else this or that will be taken away. The stubborn ones have no choice but to cave into the pressure when family is involved. They don't want to bury another relative, lose another home, watch another car get repossessed and so on! So not only are they quieted, but there is nothing but the same old speeches churned out. "I would like to thank....and I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for...I have nothing but good things to say about...I am not aware of that...I don't feed into conspiracies...I was deeply saddened when I heard about...my condolences." What they really should be saying is whatever their soul cries out for them to say and yes we all know, it all comes with a heavy price, what else is new? You believe in Jesus and you know what happened to him, so if it be God's will.
I can't help but feel angry inside because there are more of us than there are of "they"! Those who could make a difference, they are told to focus on generational wealth, great! So also do a bit of budgeting and help now--yet they are distracted with all things future, futuristic...another great distraction!
All it takes is to make an example out of one and everyone else typically falls in line, "Silence!" I can hear some wicked ones right now, "We could do this the easy way and give you an opportunity to have what other rappers have had or the hard way and give you the same treatment that the difficult ones experienced? Which is it?"
Sometimes nothing is said to the one who continues to speak truth and put up a fight against the powers that be; instead, we witness a person black-balled, canceled, reduced to an addict, or they just disappear.
Are you awake? Stay woke!
Nicholl McGuire is the author of Know Your Enemy The Christian's Critic and other books.
