Afrobeats: Beyonce's Lion King album must not be what Black Panther is to blackness

While Beyonce's The Lion King: The Gift album and Black Panther affect slightly different demographics, they share the same paths.

Now that the dust has settled, let’s have a conversation.First, let’s talk Black Panther

In 2017, Disney released Black Panther. It was the biggest pop culture moment of the year. It controlled black culture for the better part of three months.

Black people visited cinemas across the world in traditional African regalia. ‘Wakanda Forever’escaped social media as a colloquial greeting into the real world. Black people immortalized Chadwick Bozeman with words and inundated him with praises.

On social media, people added a 'T’' prefix to their names - even people whose names started with ‘T’ added another ‘T’’ prefix. At times, it felt like Black people conflated reality for fiction. People forgot that ‘T’Challa’ was actually a human being named Chadwick Bozeman, not a King.

The unspoken consensus amongst black people was that Black Panther was going to inspire some cultural moment that will impact blackness as a whole and leave a lasting legacy on the real world.

Sadly, Black Panther was nothing more than a sentimental moment

It was just a movie. It is just a movie.

Just as conversations engulfed the polity of social media, it inspired allegiance and made people choose sides. Erick Killmonger’s villanous portrayal attracted criticism. People saw it as a fault of a movie they felt was an exaltation of blackness.

The viral and wide acceptance and cultural praise for the movie came at a time when racism and xenophonbia were at their peak. Donald Trump, a man widely thought to be a bigot and a racist was the most powerful human being on earth.

Race-edged killings and police brutality became a consistency of modern reality. Donald Trump also aimed to control immigration from certain - black and Islamic - nations. A horde of white supremacists matched in Virginia, United States.