When "Thingness" Stages the Terms of Their Freedom: J. Cole's "G.O.M.D.

When "Thingness" Stages the Terms of Their Freedom: J. Cole's "G.O.M.D. by Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan n Exile) | #MicroTheory
If we are to think of chattel slavery as the attempt to reduce Black humanity to a "Thingness," what happens when that Thingness (pre-citizen in the eyes of the law) stages the terms of its own freedom, using the very thingness (culture and commodities) that it created but can never own, because Thingness can't own thingness, let alone itself?  
Under the law, escape and revolt were the ultimate acts of Black criminality--Thingness stealing itself (not some chickens in a shack). That J. Cole and director Lawrence Lamont stage this Black Criminality--a term of our resistance--only reminds that Hip-Hop has consistently re-staged the terms of our resistance via its sampling practices (Thingness stealing thingness). 
Thinking about August Wilson punching those keys to a Piano Lesson, and Charles Dutton, Rocky Carroll and the late Carl Gordon, on the occasion of Branford Marsalis's invitation, singing "Berta, Berta."