Leak! — EL BENTLY 448 “Mugabe“
Graphic by Fury Young
I got a chance to discuss the creation of "MUGABE" with EL BENTLY 448. We discussed world powers, historic philosophy and hip hop's love affair with dictatorships.
"When you're sitting in prison wrongfully incarcerated your mind goes through many things, like man, how could they do this to me? Like, why would somebody just deprive me of my family? My humanity?"
- EL BENTLY 448 💙
Look out for “MUGABE” off EL BENTLY 448’s debut EP “INNOCENT BORN GUILTY” dropping June 26!
BL: So how has freedom been treating you EL BENTLY 448?
LB: Great, just great. I’m getting in my project bag right now. I'm on the backend trying to make it make sense for me. See, I'm already putting up my money for when I drop my next project and I’m just learning from what y'all show me. I’m trying to raise 15k. I think I could get everything I need with that in terms of promotion, merch, videos etc..
BL: WelI I got some good news for you. The Marigold Project is a foundation that has been supporting Die Jim Crow for a couple years now. The gentleman who is the founder of it is a pretty damn big deal. He's an artist named Nathaniel Rateliff and they just reached out and told us that they would fund the completion of “Innocent Born Guilty.” They really wanted to participate in you getting your shot so you’ll definitely have merch now!
LB: YES!! Man I would really love the opportunity to thank them personally and send them the love I feel in my heart. I’ve been overwhelmed with the love and support-even before I came home. I bring them all out too. The Muslims, Christians, Jewish, the rich and the poor. I feel like I embody the struggle of the human condition, but also the love and that’s beautiful.
BL: So tell me a little about MUGABE. We're giving the supporters who actually take the time to read the newsletter a sneak peek. We thought that it would be good for them to see what you bring to the table. Can you tell me a little bit about the creation of that song and what inspired that?
LB: Oh, definitely. Robert Mugabe, you know… when you're sitting in prison wrongfully incarcerated your mind goes through many things, like man, how could they do this to me? Like, why would somebody just deprive me of my family? My humanity?... I happened to be on lockup when I wrote that song in 2012 and I was kind of angry, but anybody that knows me, knows that I've been doing a lot of studies; especially about the people's liberation movements. When I say the “peoples” I'm talking about the Aboriginal people, I'm talking about the people of color, I'm talking about the poor people. In the course of me doing that, I bumped into Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe used to be Rhodesia. It was run by the colonial British and Robert Mugabe was the leader of a peasant revolt; he came from huts to take his country back. So this is why you hear “I'm gonna take my freedom back, Robert Mugabe,” because he was the least likely to succeed in taking his freedom back. Nobody would have seen this aboriginal, indigenous person of Africa at that time actually come back and help his people regain their strength and their power. They renamed Rhodesia to Zimbabwe; What it was originally called by the people. Robert Mugabe has since then become known as a tyrant. Over time he became a dictator. He became oppressive to his people because he moved into a state of paranoia. So the irony of the song “Robert Mugabe” is me representing my life at the time reclaiming my freedom while being a double entendre of potentially overdosing on power. Typically, this is the people in the streets; the drug dealers, thieves, low income drop outs, trailer trash, addicts… these people are really powerful. You got brothers like Malcolm X, George Jackson, Fred Hampton… brothers like this come from that class. We've got the power, I've got the power, you got the power. This is a global song for all peoples around the globe that's going through any type of oppression, but it's also a warning. And of course, if you fight for your liberation; please don't go down the route of our brother Robert Mugabe.
BL: It's ironic we’re discussing this because my next album is a conceptual record about power. If power is not collective, it’s corrupt. I think it's really as simple as that. I feel like we’re living in a time where we’re watching the transfer of global power before our eyes. I also find it interesting that a lot of people are oblivious to America being on its last leg as the number one power in the world. China is that new nigga on the block that’s technically number one, but nobody's saying it yet because the U.S. is still old money. The country that’s rich from being rich, running shit from a finance standpoint. We used to be that industrial country with the work on the block via locomotives, manufacturing, etc… It reminds me so much of the streets. America is the old nigga who's too bougie to get in the field, but they outsource and front the whole neighborhood work which creates a loyalty to them because everyone is always in debt to them dependent on that next pack. Meanwhile, China has been over there cooking some shit up. The new wars are not fought via drone strikes. You're not fucking planting a flag on somebody's land. It's COVID, it's crypto, eliminating the dollar from trade, it's biochemical warfare. It’s also a mental game they play with U.S. citizens like the Russian propaganda during the 2016 election or the way China runs the Tik Tok algorithm. The average teenager in America’s Tik Tok is flooded with self diagnoses and oppression olympics. Meanwhile the Asian algorithm is lit! They’re teaching their kids how to build rocket ships and shit. We’re so divided and distracted. I feel like this is chess, not checkers and they have been really structuring themselves to become that number one power.
LB: Oh, oh, it's so many things to touch on with that. First and foremost, just coming from the standpoint of understanding these systems, just having that social science and that dialectical history I'm gonna say this: When you talk about socialism, socialism is just an economy. It's not an ideology, it's an economy. That means that the people have a vested interest in the country.
I want to say this too. As much as I agree with you, about America and China being two superpowers on the table; you got to include Russia. For the first time in history you got three superpowers on the table. When you already have a commune sense of looking at things, it's really a socialist aspect. We’re in it together, and we got to build this community, common unity equals community. So when America comes together and finally has a sense of community, that means we have to get past this bullshit ass racism, classism, xenophobia, etc… Once we resolve some of the issues we can be a community and we can become that power of people to be reckoned with. Not for being a super power of oppression, but of love.
BL: Well said. What's your favorite lyric in the verses of MUGABE? If you had to play it for your favorite rapper of all time? What section of that song would you play?
LB: I said, “I'm an existential purgatory trapped inside the metal, a black fallen angel from heavens a ghetto.” So existential purgatory is a term that I made. Reading Dante's Inferno, where he reimagined hell as being part of his purgatory. I had the pleasure of reading people like Viktor Frankl. You know, he was a Jewish gentleman, a man that was caught up in a holocaust. He was in a concentration camp and he became known as a logotherapist. He had a term in there called “existential vacuum.” This is when we get into a position in our lives where we don't know where to go. I was like, damn, so I'm sitting in lock up, I spent a decade in solitary confinement. They’re telling me I'm the worst guy in the state. They’re telling me I can't go anywhere. INDEFINITELY. So I felt like I was in existential purgatory, the existential meaning of life and existence; out of choice. A little background about existentialism. Existentialism is a concept that existed before some of our European brothers came up with the term existential.
We live in an absurd universe, a universe with essentially no meaning. But it is only mankind, or humankind, that gives the universe its essential meaning and the person that lives our authentic life embraces the fact that they have the unlimited freedom of choice, and a person that lives an inauthentic life; they allow circumstances and other people to create their choices. So I thought that was so profound in the philosophical and lyrical sense and I communicated that as a teacher like KRS One, channeling 2pac and Kendrick Lamar. My Jay Zs. I'm on that right.
BL: [Holds up a copy of Dante’s Inferno] For the past three years or so, I've been doing plays in colleges all across the country running my life events parallel with the Divine Comedy. It's amazing how easy it is to translate such classic text unknowingly just by being a lyricist. It just further proves how no matter how much we “grow” as a society the human condition never really evolves.
Which is why in hip hop we tend to cite a lot of historical figures. We do love our dictators. (Laughs) I can guarantee we both discovered these following people in history from the same place: Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Mussolini…
LB & BL: The Outlawz…. [simultaneous laughter]
LB: That’s crazy that is so true BL. That’s why when I first heard Jay Z say “Tom Ford” and I didn't know who that was, I was really trying to figure it out because I thought it was somebody…come to find out he was doing that for a financial thing to build a relationship with that watch company. But that's the same method that I use for MUGABE. I want to bring you into my world and introduce you to people whom otherwise you may not know.
BL: Well Jay Z did say “I’m Che Guevara with bling on, I’m complex, I never claimed to have wings on…” Speaking of which, tell the people a little something about your project “Innocent Born Guilty” that’s coming out on June 26th. What can they expect?
LB: Everybody is innocent born guilty in this thing called life. Everybody was born innocently. Nobody asked to come here. We didn't know where our parents conceived us, it could have been in the back of a car seat. But you became guilty; the minute you were born in a play that was already in progress, you were already judged. By your gender, by your class status, by your religious status, your location. Yep. It's bigger than Leon Benson. It's for the people, right? I want you to walk in my shoes and see what I've seen so we can come together. And be one.
