One day in the not-too-distant future, when the nearest star to our galaxy suddenly collapses, a group of astrophysicists from around the globe will convene to discuss the theoretical physics of the interplanetary incident. One of these researchers, we shall call him Chadwick, will bravely step forward and propose a manned space flight to examine the resulting black hole up close. And someone in that group, likely a scientist whose skin contains melanin, will try to explain the impossibility of Chad the Explorer’s white dream. They will tell him it will take years to arrive. They will explain that no one knows what or if anything can exist inside a stellar collapse.
“It is a black hole,” they will say. “Not even light can escape. You will never return.”
But Chad will resist.
“Don’t you understand?” young Chadwick will reply. “I must go. There is a whole universe that must be gentrified. Plus, it has the word ‘black’ right there in the name! My people must conquer it.”
Now if you think that prediction is either unlikely or insulting, gather around, ye unbelievers, and listen to the story of Max Siedentopf, the German-Namibian artist who created an “art installation” that uses solar energy to blast one of the shittiest Caucasian concoctions ever created across the plains of the African desert.
NPR reports that Siedentopf, a London-based “multimedia artist” (which is kinda like a DJ, but whiter), recently traveled to the 1,200-miles-long Namibian desert where he set up an art installation that consists of “six speakers attached to an MP3 player,” powered by a solar battery playing one song on an infinite loop. The work of art also features...
Hold up, let me see what else the work of art is composed of.
Wait... that’s it? My sources at CNN and NPR are telling me there’s nothing else to explain. It’s just an mp3 player hooked up to speakers, which means that anyone with an auxiliary cord is now an “artist.” But hey, I get it. Black people invented jazz, blues, hip hop, rock n’ roll and the Milly Rock and white people invented speaker wires.
Yep, this checks out.
And what song did Siedentopf choose to blast throughout the Namibian desert? I bet you’re thinking he chose an old Namibia tribal song or a tune in the tradition of the Khoikhoi people who graze their livestock in the desert’s Kuiseb river.
Have you met white people?
Ignoring contemporary white people classics about the motherland such as “Hakuna Matata” or “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” Siedentopf chose the song that most aptly symbolizes the unrelenting, ever-encroaching presence of whiteness:
Toto’s “Africa.”
Yes, he chose the tune that I have personally hated against since a guy in my college dorm tried to convince me that “Africa” is the worst song ever written, although I still contend that it’s somewhere between “We Are the World” and Tupac’s “Dear Mama” (fight me).
Literally written after one of the band members got high and watched a late-night documentary about Africa, the song is a hodgepodge of semi-racist stereotypes sang by mullet-wearing guys named Steve who manage to cover an entire continent in four minutes and forty-two seconds (Yes, there are multiple Steves in the band Toto and don’t ask me how I know this because I’m not really sure).
“I was very intrigued by this and wanted to pay the song the ultimate homage and physically exhibit ‘Africa’ in Africa,” Siedentopf told NPR. “The Namibian desert — which is, with 55 million years, the oldest desert in the world — seemed to be the perfect spot for this.”
I hate him.
So if you’re ever wandering through the Namibian Desert and wonder why your eardrums are being colonized, just realize that this is what they do. Whether it is Brooklyn, The New World or the shores of Mayosnasia on planet Wypiponia in the newly-discovered Chadwickian Galaxy, you can always be sure of one thing:
Whites gonna white.
DISCUSSION
1. I like Toto (don’t @ me).
2. I like the song “Africa”.
3. “Africa” has exactly fuck-all to do with Africa.
4. Max Siedentopf is “Namibian”, and more insufferable than you imagined: