Raps and Cartoons: Bakshi and the Warrior

I don’t have many favorites. I don’t have a favorite rapper, I don’t have a favorite actor, I don’t have a favorite football team; I am not a Christian – I don’t have a favorite god. I do, however, have a favorite animator: Ralph Bakshi. The man chiefly responsible for such features as Fritz the Cat, Wizards, American Pop, Heavy Traffic, and Coonskin. While I was lying in bed, a few days ago, thinking about Bakshi, a thought went through my head: we are hella fucking similar. Check it:

An ordering of the similarities between Ralph Bakshi and Maasai "Warrior" Singleton:

-Both are frequently misunderstood 

Both convey messages that are commonly misunderstood by people who do not take the time to observe and understand their art. Conservative people find sex and profanity in Bakshi films over the top and have almost no chance of understanding while being offended. People with little exposure to Hip-Hop will associate Maasai Warrior with a detrimental culture they dislike and never hear my songs.

-Both have a love of comics that began in childhood

Bakshi has said that he originally had the dream of becoming a comic strip cartoonist. When he was a child growing up in Brooklyn, he would forage through garbage in search of comics. When I was a kid, I would routinely lock myself in the closet to read 80’s Marvel comics scored cheaply at garage sales, thinking the exposure would prepare me to be a better writer.

-Both grew up surrounded by cultures outside their own

When Bakshi was nine, he lived in an all Black neighborhood in Washington D.C.  and, attending the local school, was the only white child in a sea of brown faces. When I was nine I was the single Black child in my own school. Bakshi has been quoted as saying “All my friends were black, everyone we did business with was black, the school across the street was black. It was segregated, so everything was black. I went to see black movies; black girls sat on my lap. I went to black parties. I was another black kid on the block. No problem!"  The difference, of course, was that I had problems.

-Both are interested in social criticism

For Bakshi, examples would include the hypocrisy of Fritz the Cat, or the depiction of urban Black life in Coonskin(and everything else). For Maasai Warrior, it would be the three songs I've done relating to child abuse, or the ones I've written about bullying or perhaps even "Teddiursa", the song about the detrimental effects of mainstream ideas of female body image.

-Both make use of parody of pop culture characters

Bakshi is known to have short cameos for Disney characters in his features. A prime example would be Mickey, Daisy, and Daffy’s silhouettes which are seen atop a skyscraper cheering on the US Air Force as Harlem is bombed in Fritz the Cat. A Maasai Warrior example might be “Cartoon Hero’s” or “PedoBat” a song appearing on the album, which releases tomorrow, about combatting Batman having found him in the process of sexually abusing one of his Robbins. 

-Both speak up about real world problems through fantasy.

Bakshi’s Wizards, simply put, is a story about the destructive power of technology and the influence of propaganda. Maasai’s (upcoming) Moon Bitch is about low self esteem - looking at it through the eyes of a God’s avatar, seeing himself as merely a pawn.

-I can't describe this one

Bakshi has said, "Ghettos for other people are all prisons, places to escape from but that wasn't it for me so many beautiful things in Brownesville-freedom". During my four years of boarding school, the first order of business upon return to Los Angeles has always been a skate down the hill and around Crenshaw. Next year: The University of South Central.

-Both are indie artists

We enjoy what we do and a lot of people don’t know who the fuck we are.