Who is the black female G.O.A.T?
In this anomaly edition. I would like to enthrone the greatest black female musician of all time. She, whom is the shining thread in the beautiful tapestry of music. To avoid unnecessary internal arguments or racking your brains with the 5 Ws early on in this discourse, which I can ‘feel from 2 planets away,’ let me just call the musician ‘artist X’ for now. Anyways, where is the fun in revealing the name of the artist now? Otherwise, the main question you should be asking yourself now is, which criterion does one use to determine that a certain artist is the G.O.A.T. The answer to this is definitely not as easy as ABC. I know of a guy, whom when drunk will probably argue saying that the level of difficulty of such a question is on the same plane as rocket science.
How can one prove that a certain artist is the G.O.A.T, in a way that will satisfy every detractor? This type of a problem is not set up in a procedural manner as a treasure hunt. Where ‘X’ simply marks the spot, or who the G.O.A.T is in this context. All I can say for now is that, in a set full of many great talents, ‘artist X’ is the cream of the crop.
Some may choose to base their selection of the G.O.A.T by looking at the meaningfulness of their work, their appeal to different age groups or entertainment value in terms of the number of records sold, number of hits produced, lyrical gymnastics, the quality of the voice produced through years of sharpening the larynx, the qualitative mind activation that comes from the lyrics or on the number of awards won. Well yeah, the only valid way of getting rid of sophists is to base an argument on numbers. But personally, I feel like numbers don’t really do justice to some of the great artists out there. The playing field of art is different from that of sport. Where Usain Bolt is simply the best in track events because he ran the 100 m in 9.58 secs and the 200 m in 19.19 secs. In many different fields, numbers and merit walk hand in hand, but in the arts it is different.
But the truth of the matter is, whichever criterion one might pick to judge an artist, other people will simply brush it aside as being subjective. Saying that criterion doesn’t hold any value as compared to this and that.
I would like to propose a way of choosing a G.O.A.T. What if we combine all the criteria together? Wouldn’t that satisfy everyone? Personally, I would compensate for numbers by including something that most people admire as much as the music content. The lifestyle of the artist. A G.O.A.T has to be someone whom people can look up to for inspiration or as a role model. How influential are they? Influence can be seen in fashion. By looking at how many people are trying to rock the same clothes the artist was seen wearing at a function or in a music video. Or basically by looking at the number of people trying to copy her character.
Only a few people have managed to reach that status. To be able to sway people consciously without opening their mouth. Some of the things I would like to look at include; the number of years the artist has been relevant in the music industry. We wouldn’t want to crown a “2 album” hit wonder when there’s someone who had to sweat for over a decade and still has a very large fan base. A fan base of music addicts fending for another album. Penultimately, one should also look at the number of steps the individual had to climb on the social status ladder. It takes great determination, perseverance and bathing in your own sweat to come from being a “nobody” to being admired by more than half of the world’s population.
Lastly, originality of the artist. This is something that most people tend to overlook and is seemingly lacking somewhat in the black female category. As far as I am concerned, ‘artist X’ is the only musician who has been seemingly successful in switching personalities in her music career and still have originality imprinted in her DNA.
The last criterion probably sells-out whom my ‘artist X’ is. To be fair, there’s no artist that will appear in each and every criterion, but the one who appears the most should at least deserve to be labelled the best. If still you are not convinced, you can go the extra mile by ranking each criterion through pitting it against the others. The one who then appears the most in the high value criteria is the G.O.A.T.
If you carry out my proposed approach to solving this ‘complex’ problem. Or if you are one of those who are overly curious as me and have already done so (probably started doing mental deductions in the second paragraph). You will see that through this strategic selection process you are left only with the likes of Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige and Rihanna. And if you repeat the process one more time, comparing only those 4 artists. I guarantee that you will find out who is my/should be everyone’s G.O.A.T. Let me leave you to that because i don’t want to spill the beans for anyone.
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