Death and celebrity: introduction

Abstract

On 16 August 2021, the rapper, singer, and songwriter Anderson .Paak shared an image of his latest tattoo on Instagram. The tattoo, situated on his forearm and consisting of nine lines of text printed in block capitals, forbids the release of any posthumous music. ‘Those were just demos and never intended to be heard by the public’ the inscription reads. Functioning as an embodied and indelible addition to any potential last will and testament, .Paak’s tattoo both underscores his personal preferences and calls into question the ethical motives attached to the production and dissemination of posthumous albums. Such questions are justified. At the time in which .Paak posted the image, debates had been taking place within the music industry surrounding the legacy of the American R&B singer Aaliyah (1979–2001), whose posthumous album Unstoppable (2022) was recently released by her estate prompting mixed responses from fans and cultural commentators. Pop Smoke, Juice Wrld, and Mac Miller are among other more recently deceased celebrities whose deaths have likewise signalled new and profitable phases in their respective music careers. For Ruth Penfold-Mounce, celebrity careers are often subject to startling posthumous extensions and/or resurrections. ‘Death’, she argues, ‘opens up new avenues through which posthumous careers can thrive, even for people whose celebrity status is not rooted in film, television or music’ (2018, p. 29). The evidence for these lucrative extended careers can be found in the Forbes’ ‘Top Earning Dead Celebrities’ list (p. 22), but beyond the commercial successes of such posthumous ventures, Penfold-Mounce also claims that ongoing careers enable the celebrity dead ‘to wield agency to the extent that they can speak and keep working after death’ (p. 36). For fans of .Paak, however, the tattoo appears to embody only the inherently unethical, capitalistic, and financially exploitative nature of the kinds of posthumous work it seeks to reject. On Twitter, for instance, one poster who shared the image commented ‘You know the music industry is f*cked up when artists tattoo these type [sic] of things’ (@filipneuff, 17 August 2021). Other tweets similarly expressed concern for .Paak, with several grimly predicting that record labels, alert to the pecuniary advantages of releasing posthumous material, would no doubt forge ahead with the release of the artist’s unfinished demos, perhaps even using the image of his tattoo as the artwork for the album cover.