2020 New Year’s Editorial

2020 – New Year’s Editorial

Note to Readers:    Neil Peart died last week, age 67. I’m sad, of course. Also reflective; as I look back, fondly, on 45 years of beautiful, original, technically brilliant and heartfelt music. Readers of the blog and the patient folks who have generously sat through my opening remarks at our conferences, know of my fascination, since the age of 15, with Rush. I love Rush. I remember a few years ago in Jersey City, when I started the day with a study of the evolution of one Rush song. We listened to (a cut from ) the first 1974 recording, then the 1976 live version – and I remember the look on some people’s faces as they thought “oh hell, he’s going to go through the last 40 years, two years at a time!” We didn't of course and the crowd stuck with me as I used some tortured logic to make all this relevant to our beautiful, original, technically brilliant – and heartfelt - corner of the chemical industry.

So it first seemed a bit inappropriate to publish the blog I had largely already written over Christmas for this editorial, about an artist that I don’t even like. But the message I have below is (I think) good and it’s relevant. So, we’re going to do it. There’ll be time in future blogs to explore the music and lyrics of Neil Peart. Especially the lyrics.

If you’re not familiar with these editorials you should know there is absolutely no surfactant news here. This post is for your entertainment and perhaps it may encourage you to think about some things. That’s it. So you can stop reading here if you came for the news. The December news blog is up and January will be published right after ACI.

This blog will be an exposition of the meaning of the following 68 second video. If this idea does not sound fun or interesting to you, then please stick with the news posts.

First a story that could have been true: Mother Teresa and Cardi B (an American rapper and star of the above video) walk into a bar. Cardi breezes right past the velvet rope and the, improbably bemuscled, slab-of-granite, bouncers, Mother T in tow, up the steps, past Beyoncé with barely a nod, kicks Justin Bieber out the way and delivers an impressive stream of invective and epithets at the now, visibly flustered host, who, responding with a barely audible “yes ma’am”, escorts the duo to the VVVIP area, created just for them, overlooking the pullulating dance-floor packed with not-quite A, B and C listers for their viewing pleasure. In a verbal fusillade that one might reasonably have expected to be directed at someone who just ran over your pet puppy, Cardi orders a drink, the words Moet and Hennessy just about discernible among the Anglo Saxon words of four letters and one syllable. Somewhat nonplussed, Mother T murmurs reassuringly to the quivering waiter, “glass of water, my dear boy, no ice, please”.

The next day, Cardi B and Mother T walk into City Hall. Mother T, with humble yet piercing smile affixed, Cardi in tow, totters obliviously through the metal detector, giggling as it goes off, marks a sign of the cross on the, now kneeling, police sergeant’s forehead, blesses the security guards’ rosaries, walks innocently through several layers of security into Mayor Giuliani’s office, where the US president and his VP, jumping up apologetically, offer their seats to our ill-matched protagonists and leave quietly. Mother T, with lips definitely moving but in a voice trained by years of silent prayer, gently enquires after the Mayor’s family and reminds him to keep saying both is morning and evening prayers. Then, chuckling, she mentions that the little sisters of the poor would really like free, unrestricted and reserved parking on the island of Manhattan. The mayor entreats Mother T to please accept this parking privilege for all 5 boroughs of the city as anything less would be deeply embarrassing to him. Mother T smiles. Cardi, jaw now literally on the floor, manages to cough out in her best first-holy-communion voice “What she said”.

These vignettes, of course, did not happen, although the meeting about parking between Mother Teresa and Giuliani (without Cardi), did take place.

But here’s what’s interesting to me: Two single women, humble beginnings, simple plan, steady execution, global impact. Mother Teresa and Cardi B have much common. Yes, they are radically different people operating differently in totally different fields as the vignettes above illustrate, but they have lived a similar story. It’s a story we can learn from.

I’d originally conceived of this blog as a letter to my colleagues at P2 on what we could learn from the life of Mother Teresa. Then, before I could write it, one of them sent me the Pepsi video. I changed the identity of the chief protagonist in the letter, from Mother T to Cardi B but the story remained the same. This blog-post is adapted from that letter.

Most readers know who Mother (now Saint) Teresa was. Cardi B, maybe not so much. Cardi B is a successful rapper, 3 number 1 singles, a number 1 album, a bunch of platinum records and winner of best rap album at the 2019 Grammy’s. Loads of other awards. By any relevant definition, she’s made it. That Pepsi video contains more than meets the eye here and there’s wads of meaning crammed into those 68 seconds. There’s so much to unpack, so...

First, let’s just observe that if you’re doing TV ads for Pepsi, you are there. You’re rich and getting richer, at an exponential rate. And it's a good rich (not drug-dealer rich, hedge-fund rich or slumlord rich) because one of the most valuable brands and admired companies on the planet is paying to be associated with you. The most recent estimate of Cardi’s net worth is only $12 Million, but honestly I can’t see it staying within 2 digits next year. Jay Z’s (another rapper) roughly $1Bn net worth is a more realistic target for Cardi B in the coming years.

What’s interesting though is that Cardi B came from a pretty low place in life quite recently. Now I guess I should caution you right here that if you’re inclined to do some internet research, Ms. B has not exactly led a G-Rated life, nor does she exactly sing nursery rhymes. End of trigger warning. So, as a Teenager, she worked as a cashier at the Amish Market in Tribeca, NY. She also lived with an abusive man (actually in the bloke’s mother’s apartment) on whom she depended financially, as her mother had thrown her out of the house. In order to earn some decent money and get free of this mammy’s boy wife-beater she took a job, erm.. dancing at a .. er… gentlemen’s nightclub. She vowed to save (not earn but actually save from earnings – big difference) $100,000 to invest in herself, and she did. Part of that investment, it must be said, was in dodgy plastic surgery, at 19 years old, to enhance those parts of the human anatomy which the Western consumer market most highly values. This compounded her earning power. Another investment was in an apartment, which she promptly rented out in order to secure some regular income. The goal was freedom and money was the tool to get it.

Next up for Cardi – Instagram. She thought this social media outlet could generate some traffic for her emerging investment property business. She attracted followers with selfie videos giving relationship advice and the odd joke. The first post was on July 14, 2015. Today she has 57 million followers. On the way to 57m she used this growing fan-base to book appearances for herself at nightclubs where she generated more buzz. She’s 23 at this point and not a note (beat?) of rap had yet passed her lips. She concludes there’s more out there than being a landlord and an Instagram “personality”. She invests in some studio time and makes a rap mixtape called… well never mind what it was called. Suffice to say that her work in the studio got her a small role on season 6 of VH-1’s “Love and Hip-hop” reality show.

The show purported to give viewers a look at how a bunch of young aspiring rap-stars struggle to make it big. Predictably it focused more on hook-ups, fights and bacchanalia (so I’m told. I didn't see it. I’ll never see it). Nonetheless this was a perfect vehicle for Cardi and she even achieved minor celeb status after a showdown with another cast member (in a delicious mélange of cultural metaphors, a Christian Louboutin red soled shoe was flung across the room). The storyline that the producers had for Cardi was the dumb (now former) dancer who couldn't sing, thinking she could have a rap career and failing at everything. A train-wreck of a woman with one talent (and it wasn't music). Cardi could have made this a pretty nice career; reality star (a la Snookie), instagram personality (and still packing nightclubs without singing a note – like a sort of minor league Kardashian) and – don’t forget Bronx / Queens landlord (like some other successful folks). But she had joined the show with one goal in mind, to launch a successful music career. The storyline written for her wasn't co-operating so she quit after two seasons to write her own storyline; leaving behind two huge things for her – TV fame and a decent paycheck.

Within a few months of leaving the show, Cardi released her first “mix-tape” (they’re not actually tapes, btw and “releasing” means putting the music yourself onto Instagram, Youtube, Soundcloud etc..), followed by volume 2 of, well the title’s not that important. Aided by her already huge and loyal social media following, these releases took off and she soon thereafter signed a deal with Atlantic (you know, of Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Led Zep fame). Great right? But not there yet. To get Pepsi-commercial rich and famous you need to be firmly in the mainstream. Mainstream breakout was to come with the release of her first single, Bodak Yellow (there’s a clean version but this has few original words left in it) followed by an appearance on the Wendy Williams show. Wendy is basically daytime TV royalty (that’s why you’ve never heard of her). She defines / reflects the culture; not the whole culture obviously but a very large money-spending part of it. This is like the debutante’s ball for the glitterati. This is the first rung on the ladder to a Pepsi commercial. This says, yeah you may have songs out there that talk in explicit terms about, well, thus and such, and use that word and the other word, strung together by a succession of those other types of (Anglo Saxon, four letter, one syllable) words, but you know just how far to push things in mainstream company and not one millimeter more. Like a Wylie E Coyote character you get way out over the 3,000 foot drop but always scramble back to terra firma. That is: Daytime. TV. Mainstream. Consumer-culture. Gold.

The song reached number 2 on the Billboard hot 100 (Billboard’s still a thing apparently). This was June 2017. 7 years on from the Amish market and the wife beater, 6 years from the dodgy plastic surgery, 2 years after the first Instagram post. In April 2018, Cardi released her first studio album on Atlantic and streaming sales promptly beat the prior record held by Beyoncé (a prominent member of the consumer market royal family). Does this look like an exponential growth curve to you? Small shallow steps (quit the market, start dancing) which show little promise beyond the immediate benefits, but you keep going and pretty soon you’re bigger than Beyoncé! I mean, it looked like she literally came out of nowhere. You’re at a sweet 16 or a barmitzvah in 2016 and you hear whatever dross teenagers liked back then. In 2017 all you hear is Cardi-B (clean versions if the parents have the foresight to demand it from the DJ). Today Cardi is effortlessly checking off every cultural milestone: The mansion with an indoor gun range, the private jet(s), the cover of Vogue, the Met Gala (and a dress that, IMHO, outshone the great Kim Kardashian’s), the rapper boyfriend (you haven’t heard of him) ,the daughter called Kulture, loadsa money and a Pepsi commercial. And I think you have to agree. Exponential. Self-made.

So what’s the point of all this? Do I like Cardi B? No. Do I like her music? No. Do I think she has made a positive contribution to society? No. Do I admire Cardi B? Hmmm. Do I love the story? Yes. Why? Because, stuck in a very low place, from which, sadly few people escape, she identified an objective (freedom), a tool with which to get it (money) and an absurdly simple plan (dancing, real estate and music). There’s millions of girls, and boys, out there right now with exactly that plan (minus perhaps the real estate) She executed the plan. That’s where most people fall down. Upon achieving a level of success of which few dream (VH-1 reality star for gosh-sakes!) - nope, not good enough. Keep executing toward the main objective – consumer market royalty. And when the rocket takes off (on the Wendy show), stay the heck on it. You know, if you look back, she had very little natural talent. You wouldn't have seen her in the Amish market back then and said to yourself that this girl’s going places. She had personality, obviously, and, in retrospect, a lot of drive and focus. The rest was created, from the resources she had at hand, by her.

You’ve realized by now. I see a lesson in the story. To me, the cool thing about Cardi is that she had four stories already written for her: Story #1: Battered girlfriend. Sad story. Lived by millions of women. Story #2: Dancer. Gets independence. Invests in a future. Could turn out OK. Story #3: Reality TV Star. Beyond most of her peer’s aspirations. Money, fame – the works! Story #4: in the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the rap world. This is the story she chose to live.

As with Cardi, so with you. I know, it’s hard to envision. Think about it. This story is being lived out every day around the world by all sorts of people in all sorts of fields. It’s already been written. It just has to be lived. Cardi B and Mother T did. Maybe you should? I know what you’re saying (if you got this far). “I’ve got a job and a mortgage (maybe you took the job because you have the mortgage), a wife, a husband, and two American teenagers and tuition and a house in the suburbs whose utility bill could power a small to mid-sized country in other parts of the world.” And you’re right and that’s OK. This is an entertainment post, first and foremost . Maybe you just read this article for the pictures and that’s fine by me.

But think a bit more. Cardi saves $100K. You live (I know it’s un-American) way within your means, no Starbucks!, and do the same. Cardi gets the plastic surgery. You get an MBA or an accounting degree online or learn a foreign language on Coursera. Cardi gets on, then quits, the reality show (now I’m really stretching analogies to breaking point). You take the trophy job, knowing you’ll never make your home there but you’ll add a lot of value and learn a lot and part, friends. Cardi invests in herself and gets on the Wendy show. I dunno. You have the courage to pursue the story you have chosen for yourself not what has been written for you. You wanna run a company? You can do that right now. It might be a company of one to start with, HQ – your basement, but you can. You wanna change the world? Most of my readers are in North America and Western Europe. Merely by virtue of your physical location and time in history you have unprecedented opportunity to do that (Think about it. Google it). You have kids? Remember when they were like 6 and you got a card from them that said “best mam in the world” . That’s a story. They’re giving you a story. Imagine if you spent just one week, no, a day, just a single day, living that story. Wow right? It’s hard though. Easy to write. Hard to do. That’s why there’s only one Cardi and one Mother T. If you look at it like that you’re missing something. There’s millions of fields! Could you write a story which has you as the Cardi B of cosmetic preservative market research. Could you be the Mother Teresa of solids handling? What about the Cardi B of church 50:50 raffles.? See what I’m saying? Pick the story. Pick the field you want to live it in – and give it a go.

So we learned a lesson from the Cardi story. But, I know you guys and that’s not enough for you. There’s a more fundamental question you’re asking. The fact that she made it – what does that say about the society in which she made it? That’s our society I’m talking about. The one in which we work, play, raise families, vote, invent, celebrate every July 4^th, you know, America. Is it a good thing that such a story can be written about mainstream success in our culture? Let’s take a very careful look at some of the lyrics that Ms B freely and openly proclaims to her listeners:

From Bodack Yellow – her mainstream breakout Wendy show hit:
Hah, it's Cardi, ayy
Said, "I'm the ****, they can't **** with me if they wanted to"
"I don't gotta dance"
Said, "Lil ****, you can't **** with me if you wanted to" (ooh)
These expensive, these is red bottoms, these is bloody shoes (ooh)
Hit the store, I can get 'em both, I don't wanna choose (bah)
And I'm quick, cut a ****** off, so don't get comfortable, look (ooh)

Yes – we’ve got the F, B and N words all packed into the first verse.

You get the picture right? and don’t kid yourself; these songs are not just 2AM club anthems, they’re playing at quinceañeras and bar-mtizvahs across the land.

If you study Cardi’s lyrics (which I’ve done so you don’t have to) – they’re basically about agency, the ability of a person to act as they wish. Fair enough, free-will, nothing wrong with that. I like that. But listen more closely and the focus is very much on sexual agency and the use of (almost exclusively) money and power to exercise such agency. And to me that is not good because it classifies some people as merely objects, as means to an end, parts of a machine whose sole purpose is to fulfill the needs of the operator of the machine. Not individuals.

One of the great achievements of western civilization has been the realization of each person as an individual, an agent with rights and not a mere object to be exploited. So should we care that in 2020 the musical messages pumped out by Cardi happen to be squarely in the mainstream? Not convinced? With caution, google Cardi’s GBM V1, her first mix-tape which was well established in the public domain before Pepsi invested in her as a brand spokesperson.

I often say in these blogs that “the culture is the culture” and you may not like it, but you live in it and do business in it and so you better get somewhat familiar with it. But is the “hey that’s the way of the world, better go along with it” attitude the right one when a mainstream message celebrates the idea of people as objects, not individuals. Taken to its tipping point in the 20^th Century, this idea of people as objects in the greater machine, killed 10’s of millions in Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Maoist China, among many others. So am I saying that Cardi is the next Stalin but with better nails and hair? Of course not; but ask yourself is there maybe an obligation to not just accept the culture when we see it veer off into dangerous and familiar territory.

Now I know what approximately half of you are saying: “Neil you’re just upset because it’s a girl that’s singing this”. You don't recall all this Stalinist- alarm nonsense about generations of maltliquormarinated misogynist male rappers who sang as bad, if not worse, songs. And it goes further back than rap. There were some album covers for certain 70’s testosterone metal bands that you cannot even find on google now (Scorpions fans; you know who you are). But now, a girl is singing this type of thing and it’s suddenly the end of Western civilization. There may be a point there. Maybe this Cardi/Pepsi video, for me just brought this thinking to the fore.

Here’s another thought. Let’s say you agree this music is, on balance, promoting a message that is not great. And, thought experiment, you could go back in time to that Amish market and talk to a young Cardi. Would you try to stop her leaving to dance in gentlemen’s clubs? What? and stop her from escaping a violent relationship? Convince her not to go into reality TV – and thereby prevent her from leaving “the stage”? Probably not, right? Because, freewill and self determination are hers as much as anyone else’s.

It’s not that easy is it? There’s a player in this drama we’ve not talked about much; Pepsi. Pepsi’s a really fascinating company. They’re an iconic brand and company – over 100 years old. Market Cap of $190bn on sales of $66Bn – that’s pretty huge. But that is not all – there are more great things about Pepsico. They are enourmously respected in business and society at large. In fact they are a media darling. Among the many awards they have won: Named among Ethisphere's World's Most Ethical Companies for the 13th consecutive year (2019), Named among America’s Most JUST Companies (2018), Acknowledged by Black Enterprise as one of the Best 40 Companies for Diversity (2018), Named among Corporate Responsibility Magazine's World's 100 Best Corporate Citizens (2018).. the list goes on and on. This aint Philipp Morris. This aint Juul. This aint Bayer/Monsanto. This company is the darling of the darlings. And at Christmas in 2020, Cardi B is the face of the brand. Is there anything to think about this?

Cynics may sneer that they are made for each other. Cardi corrodes the culture and Pepsi corrodes your teeth, the lining of your gut and your entire metabolism with a sugar-in-water product designed to be addictive to kids. I’ve talked about the beloved Pepsi quite a bit in recent years. The summary is this. If Pepsi disappeared today, what would happen? Nothing. If the whole soft drink industry disappeared – what? We’d all be a lot healthier for starters. If Stepan, Henkel, Exxon disappeared? Well let’s see how Western civilization looks without surfactants. Not that civilized.

I gotta wrap this up (even if only because I’m running out of Cardi pictures that I can use without breaking the blog’s G rating) . The jury’s still out for me on Cardi. I love the story. The message, I'm still wrestling with. And we do have an individual duty to shape the culture ourselves - by our actions, words and inactions. Don't forget; do nothing, fail to act and you still shape the culture.  When the CEO of Pepsi gets up in the morning, he knows what he has to do that day and he must know, at some level, the health effects of what that job is. When Cardi gets up in the morning, I don't know what she thinks. One thing I am clear on. When you get up in the morning – it should be fist-pumps in the bathroom mirror. And when you go to work in whatever part of our chemical industry, you should be getting high fives from the neighbours all the way down the street, in gratitude for providing the infrastructure on which our civilization runs. You should be getting a bloody ticker-tape parade on the way home in the evening for what you’ve done that day. Every day.

In my mind, with the original story, ending with a rallying cry of “Let’s be like Mother Teresa!” sounded at least plausible. Ending with “Let’s be like Cardi B!” is too much and too complex right now. So let’s just say: You know the stories already. Pick one, a really, really good one.

Happy New Year!

See you at ACI!

See you in May!