Malcolm X and Fidel Castro.  Real Revolutionaries.   Claim your power by President For Life.  ”No one man should have that much power.”  Manning Marable, Malcolm X, A Life of Reinvention, p. 128.  “No one man should have all that power, the clock’s tickin’, I just count the hours, Stop trippin’, I’m trippin’ off the power” Kanye West ft. Dwele, Power.              The quote about Malcolm X was popularized in Spike Lee’s film adaptation of the biography of X.  It is what one stunned police officer said to the New York Amsterdam News editor James Hicks who was reporting on a demonstration led by Malcolm X on April 26, 1957, in protest of a police beating of a Nation of Islam member, Johnson Hinton, who had intervened in the violent arrest by the police of another man.  X led a phalanx of Nation of Islam members along with a crowd of two thousand to a quiet confrontation with the police at the police station where a gravely wounded Hinton was being incarcerated over night.  Though unable to secure Hinton’s release after meeting with the police for a couple of hours, X emerged from the police station and dispersed the crowd with a hand signal.  The police had never seen anything like it.              Kanye West aligned himself with Malcolm X’s legacy of sociopolitical and cultural impact by echoing the quote in his song “Power”.  The reference probably escaped most people, but the resonance did not.  West is a controversial figure similar to X because of his charisma and full-throated unapologetic expression of his views whether right or wrong.  Moreover, both X and West blast us with the sophistication of black masculinity and challenge our perceptions of it.  It’s impossible to be indifferent about either X or West, but can there really be any argument about who has a more powerful legacy?  By alluding to the quote without referencing X, West is asking us the question or at least preparing us, with typical bombast, for what he believes his legacy will be.  He’s cheeky enough to even include a ticking time bomb scenario even though there are no grounds for anyone to expect an assassin’s bullet to find him soon except that he may self-destruct from “trippin off the power”.  With West alive the question is an open one as the hagiography of living legends is always an immature debate.                                                                         Nevertheless, who can deny the power of either of these guys?  West is claiming President For Life status.  He’s telling us that he is the real deal and he’s forging his legacy in our collective consciousness.  How are you going to be a President For Life?
A revolution that landed. Fidel Castro. President For Life.
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