It’s OK to Attribute

I watched an old Lil Wayne interview earlier today because The Internet is gracious and abundant with timesuck opportunities. It largely consists of Lil Wayne making #FacebookDeep proclamations about role models and passions. He makes only a modicum of sense over the course of 30 minutes. But, at the 9:50 mark he said something that struck me as interesting.

Lil Wayne goes on a rant about how he was proud to get his stomach tattoo because he wanted to be like Tupac. He got the tattoo because he wanted to be like Tupac. I started thinking of the last time I heard someone outright gush about the real reason they did something, and I came up blank. Perhaps it’s the fear of being called a dickrider or hypebeast, but it’s rare that any one says “I’m doing this because that person did it.” If they do admit attribution, it’s usually cloaked in a “Yeah, they did that but I did it better” sentiment.

You had a hot line; I made it a hot song.

It made me then think of that Baby Boomer trope about how millenials get “participation ribbons” and how it’s instilled into us that we are all winners… that we are all unique. No one wants to admit that they aren’t wholy original anymore. The influences can be apparent, the motives could’ve even been to copy, but no one wants to admit it. Look at Travis Scott: steals songs, steals artwork, is a co-producer on most songs, adopts “La Flame” moniker (Gucci), adopts Future’s Sraight Up ad lib… what about his aesthetic is original? I’ll concede that “nothing is original anymore,” but these are pretty blatant rip-offs, and not a distilled, blend of influences. As long as you don’t make mention of where you got the idea, even if the evidence is overwhelming, it belongs to you.

You had a hot aesthetic; I made it my hot aesthetic.

Imagine I didn’t link to those Noz tweets. You would have all thought I used my considerably large intellect to supply those examples instead of consuming and regurgitating them. Damn… maybe I should have done that instead. How the fuck do I edit a published post on Medium?

Travis isn’t a sole example. There are dozens of rappers who do what he does, there’s artists of all genres that do this, probably most egregious is the popular “SoundCloud” DJ who does nothing but remixes remixes. Also, let’s not even get started on websites who don’t at least [via].

I see this type of behavior on Twitter all the time. Instead of natively retweeting , a person screenshots the tweet and tweets the pic (sometimes going so far as to crop out their twitter handle), effectively usurping that jokes as “theirs.” We’ll save manual retweets for another day, but there is definitely a silent absorption of attribution that happens with those, as well.

You had a hot tweet; I made it a hot meme.

The harsh truth is a majority of people are not original, and have never created anything in their lives. What they can easily do is find a picture on Tumblr and introduce it onto their timeline and essentially take credit for finding it. We can’t all be creatives, but we can all be curators.

*Follows Top Black Twitter Accounts And Creates Listsicles Chronicling Their Genius Instead of Reaching Out To Those Individuals I Routinely Lift Content From To See If They Would Like To Write Their Own Articles And Make Money From Their Talent*

You had a hot take; I made it a hot blog.

I’m an advocate of giving people credit. It’s OK to attribute lines of thinking or joke constructs to someone who inspired you. It’s OK to say, “I got the idea to do this from [Person], and I thank them.” Endorse those people who inspire you. Drive awareness to their brilliance so that others who are uninitiated can benefit. And, who knows, maybe by giving the attention to the people who do create, more opportunities come their way, which in turn means more instances for them to inspire you.

You had a hot idea; you made it a hot idea. Good job on your hot idea!