Kehinde Wiley Ice-T, 2005

In 2005, VH1 commissioned Kehinde Wiley to paint portraits of the honorees for that year’s Hip Hop Honors program. The painting portrays Ice-T as Napoleon Bonaparte.

Kehinde Wiley has painted Hip Hop artists in the characteristics of old portraits from the 1800’s that was exclusive to the rich and powerful to document the significance of these people and their movements in history, by placing Hip Hop artists and the rap culture on this pedestal raising it above mere entertainment and showing it as a movement of black empowerment and black culture. The original painting of Napoleon was painted in 1806, at which time in America the enslavement of Africans was at its peak, a bleak contrast in history when the only imagery of African Americans at that time is in chains which was followed by a long history of black oppression in America, portraying black people as powerless victims in an everlasting struggle, never shown as the victors. It creates a powerful juxtaposition by showing these African Americans as power symbols, victorious leaders and fathomable superheroes winning against a system stacked against them.

I like to think of future humans coming across this painting when all technology and data of our time has faded, wondering what this enigma of Ice-t is and how he led the French in the 1800’s and formed Body Count in 1990.