Entrepreneurs in Brown Skins? Performing Matter into Contemporary Black Lives

Abstract

COVID-19 aside, the year 2020 was characterized by further challenges to the black identity. The gruesome murder of George Floyd and other low moments of racial discrimination triggered a wave of protests across the USA and beyond. The year saw the convictions of the proponents of the Black Lives Matter being tested to the limits. Whereas popular music has constituted a vehicle for conveying the concerns of the movement since its conception, I argue that the events of the year 2020 and the attendant looting and destruction in the guise of protests, have propelled an impetus in African American creatives to speak matter into black lives. Drawing from the texts (2019) and video (2020) of Beyoncé Knowles’s “Brown Skin Girl,” the article discusses artists’ attempt to deploy chromatism in debunking negative connotations associated with “black.” Further, the audio-visual constructs in Pharrell Williams’s “Entrepreneur” (2020) is assessed as a deliberate creation to sustain a positive narrative at a critical moment of African American history.