Harlem Cover Man Diddy Tells GQ He Wants To “Change The Narrative Of The Black Race”

Bossip reports that Diddy aka Brother Love is on the cover of the April 2018 issue of GQ Magazine talking about his life and legacy. The article, which you can read in full here is full of all kinds of interesting tidbits. For example, did you know that Diddy was the highest paid musician in 2017, despite not releasing any new music? Fascinating right?

But what we were actually most fascinated by is his devotion to elevating black culture — a devotion that’s impossible to ignore if you follow Diddy on social media.

Here’s what he told GQ:

“My culture,” he said. “I want to be an authentic, unapologetic warrior for black culture and the culture of the street and how it moves. My thing is most importantly to change the narrative of the black race. I can’t relate to anything that isn’t about that.”

He said he wants to develop an app that will allow users to look at a given city or neighborhood and see where the black-owned and black-friendly businesses are. He didn’t want to say too much about the app. It wasn’t finished. He didn’t have a name for it yet.

“This is not about taking away from any other community,” he said. “We’ll still go to Chinatown. We’ll still buy Gucci!” He laughed. “But the application will make it possible for us to have an economic community. It’s about blacks gaining economic power.” He and Jay-Z have been talking about this, he said, about moving the race forward actively, by means of: making a lot of money and putting it back into the community.

“I don’t believe in passiveness,” Love said. “At some point there has to be some kind of fight. I feel like we’ve done a lot of marching. It’s time to start charging.”

Much the same way Hov big upped Diddy on the ‘4:44’ album, Diddy reveals his conversations with Jay-Z have been about upliftment:

In his conversations with Jay-Z, they’ve been using the term “black excellence” for leaders who came forward to uplift the race by example. It was an updated incarnation of W. E. B. Du Bois’s “talented tenth,” based not on class or lightness of skin tone this time but instead on getting and being extremely wealthy. And philanthropic. “We’re into psychological warfare,” he said. “The difference is, we’re not trying to hurt nobody.”

Glad he added that last part because, who knows how Chief Cheetoh or Tomato Low Rent would have tried to spin that psychological warfare line.

Diddy also talked to GQ about the guilty feelings he has carried surrounding the death of Notorious B.I.G. as well as his recent battle with depression:

I asked if he talked to a therapist about this stuff. “Nah,” Love said, “I haven’t dealt with any of that yet. I try to get into it, but…that’s something that just hurts so bad. That’s a time that’s still suppressed.”

He said that two and half years ago, he had become depressed. He’d developed an addiction to his phone. He felt “far away from God.” He went to Sedona, Arizona.

“Where the vortexes are?” I asked.

“Exactly,” he said, smiling. In Sedona he reconnected with his magic. He was hearing new songs in his head. “I’m not 100 percent knowing how to come up with the sounds yet,” he said, but he felt almost ready to compete on the radio again.

Read the entire article here.