One of the first accomplishments my sister got was buying her first car, a Range Rover in a unique chocolate tone. The tradition has it that the first song that plays when you first go home with your new baby becomes the soundtrack for the momentous achievement. The first song that played when she drove out was AKA’s Congratulate Me.
My sister is not the only person to have a sentimental attachment to AKA. His career, one where his music can quite literally be played in important spaces like weddings and birthdays, becomes momentous in our pop cultural history. His music has been able to carry a sentimentality that has tattooed him onto the memories of many, so when the call came that it was time to mute AKA because of the case between him and his late fiancée, Nelli Tembe, I must admit I was surprised.
At this point, it has become common knowledge that muting an artist has been an act that often backfires, especially when you are a household name. Instead, celebrities enjoy and ride on the free marketing it comes with.
Another dangerous element of muting celebrities is that it becomes a group activity that forces everyone to participate in the call for justice. By pressuring individuals to take part in the fall of a celebrity we have created social contagion that instructs even those who are complicit to perform their allegiance. It has even allowed for a space where it is possible to erase someone even though the reason is simply rooted in deep dislike.
While it is necessary to bring a call to silence problematic celebrities like AKA, it is equally important for us to figure out just how muting AKA is going to assist in the eventual social change that will prevent what he it is alleged to have done from happening again.
Muting, much like cancelling AKA, is a soft prison sentence that looks good on social media but fails to address how exactly we are going to facilitate reform.
What is lacking in the necessity of cancelling artists is the equally important conversations behind reformative justice, one where a resolution is found. One where there is a change. The social prison that cancelled celebs are put in becomes similar to those in real life, a cesspool of society’s future rejects who can never really re-enter without the scarlet letter they went in with.
What cancel culture does, instead, is sow anger. So, much time is spent circulating disdain for a cancelled celebrity that very little is done to effectively punish or reform them. What social media has become is a general ledger of wrongdoings ensuring that any wrongdoer, guilty or not, will be kept out of society.
The permanent scars they leave their victims with are left to last just as long. Whether that is justice or not, it leaves a crevice where the likes of AKA are effectively muted are slim to none.
This is not the first time AKA has been called to be cancelled. The industry is rife with men and women who have problematic opinions and views that are protected. These trickle down to fans that have the same thoughts and will protect their troubling takes along with the celebrities who have said it.
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