By Tommy Ryk

Photos by Joshua Reinhard

Graphics by Samantha Riepe

Bling, a 10-minute short-film created by an emerging director from Miami, Kareem Edouard, takes a hard knock look at the origin of "conflict diamonds," diamonds extracted within the rebel lines of a legitimate government and directed towards military opposition of that government. Narrated by one of my personal heroes, Chuck D of Public Enemy, this film explores one of humanity’s greatest tragedies and ironies; how lifeless rocks became and have remained more valuable than life itself.

Edouard hopes to reach a younger audience - one that is already susceptible to an unparalleled advertising campaign used by the De Beers company, the same one propagated into the United States media culture circa 1940. The campaign continues to link a surprisingly common gem (with sobering, scant market value) to notions of wealth, status and most genius, cheesy and tantamount of all: the very essence of love and marriage.

The film is a free-market prologue (you can view the entire film below our interview) for a feature length-documentary. Its to-the-jugular and very graphic means of communication cribs from the music video, which begets the film’s primary topic and message. Bling harshly pokes the buffoonery now on display in the perpetually blinged-out (re: diamond-crazed) state of hip hop, and sheds light upon the deplorable, merciless African landscape from which these “conflict diamonds” are excavated. In other words, Bling smartly processes and clarifies what Kayne was cycling over on the remix to “Diamonds of Sierra Leone.” ignore had the pleasure to sit down and build with Kareem, digging deeper into the insane currency of compressed carbon that has dominated over our last century.

ignore: What inspired you to make this film?

Kareem Edouard: I’d come back from tour in Europe with the Bush Babees and I interacted with a lot of emcees worldwide, and I befriended an emcee there named Afrob, a German emcee of African descent. He was in New York working on his new album and we got together to hangout. We were walking down 42 nd Street, and obviously 42 nd Street, there’s glamour everywhere, and right above the MTV building there was a huge 70-foot poster of Damon Dash with a medallion that was diamond encrusted. That’s when Afrob asked me if I knew anything about “conflict diamonds,” and I was, like, no.

Then he started to tell me a story about a young boy, about six years old that worked in the Sierra mines with his family. The air was really thick and not good for his young lungs, and he had come out and spoken to the overseer saying I can’t really breathe, I’m trying to dig, could I get some fresh air? The overseer said yeah, no problem. So the young boy walked away, and the overseer pulled out a gun and shot the boy in the head: Expendable. I looked up at that poster of Dame Dash and I said there’s a connection here, I need to tell the story. Keep in mind, this was three or four years ago, way before Kanye West put out the song “Diamonds from Sierra Leone.” I had this on the brain.

When did you first realize that diamonds have no real value to humanity other than being the hardest substances on Earth?

KE: It’s funny you said that. I’ve met the Diamond Commissioner of Namibia [formerly South-West Africa] and he had told me that for us, as Africans, throughout our history diamonds were just rocks, you’d just kick them. For me as a person, they really have no value to me, they’re just rocks; kings, queens, Elizabeth Taylor, Lindsay Lohan, 50 Cent, they’re just wearing rocks. If you look at in a capitalist sense, it’s beautiful, because you’re taking something that’s kind of worthless, and placing this astronomical value on it. Our founding fathers, John Smith, Adam Smith, they’d look at it and just be like, wow.

What role does control play in all this in terms of false value, scarcity and so on?

KE: Well, let’s look at De Beers, a massive, massive conglomerate of the diamond trade which runs 70-80% of the market. Upon speaking to the commissioner in Namibia, I had asked him how he felt about this monopoly over the diamond trade. He had told me it didn’t really bother him because De Beers has set up a fixed rate for the sale of diamonds that doesn’t fluctuate: “No matter what I bring them, I’m always going to get this.” This would not be the case if it was a diverse market.

So, the price standard works for Namibia. At the same time, Tom Zoellner who wrote the book, The Heartless Stone, was telling me stories that De Beers has a meeting with the biggest diamond buyers 10 times a year and slides them each an envelope with their allotment of diamonds: You have no comment or anything to say. Open up the envelope and walk away. The moment you start saying I don’t like this or that, you’re cut out.

Control from that respect is ridiculous. Now overall in the world, as a whole, it’s a hustle, man, if you want to look at the whole Illuminati theory, there are, like, 10 families running the game. I always say, look at what happened to Microsoft when they got sued ridiculously for bundling Internet Explorer with their operating system. No one is yet to ask De Beers any questions at all on how it can run a monopoly over a gem.

It’s funny at the end of the day what I think is the world’s most valuable commodity, water is just shit on. At the end of the day, it’s more important than food, you’ll die way before starvation by not having water. Water will be what wars are fought over. What about the people of Africa, why does De Beers have this grip on them, when they’re just a family in Europe?

KE: Well, when you have the diamond commissioner of Namibia saying I have no problem with this monopoly, it is what it is…If you have someone that’s a market juggernaut, there’s no way you can touch them. Government officials are part of this hustle too. When Sierra Leone was first liberated, the company was exporting two million karats for its first set of years. About 10 years later it dropped to 40 thousand carats. But the country is still producing [that] original amount of karats, but it’s being funneled through various pockets, including the Lebanese. It’s weird they even have a stranglehold on the way diamonds are distributed through Africa. So De Beers got a crazy grip, and nobody wants to talk about it, their rooted in old money, old tradition.

Kind of off topic, but it relates, when do you think it became good to be bad? Cool to be negative?

KE: We were talking about this, the lyric by Run-DMC, “not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good.” It’s really about having an edge to your image. If you’re gonna talk about gun-clapping or slapping your ho, it’s whatever you can bring to the table that show’s you have a rough side to you. Prime example: Kobe Bryant. He was squeaky clean, a McDonald’s kid, a Sprite kid. But as soon as his trial for rape came up, Nike called him. He was dealing with Adidas. At the end of the day, I was talking to one of my “positive emcee” friends and I don’t want to name names. At the end of the day, he said, I just want to get laid. And I’m saying that for a reason, reason being anything that separates you from the mainstream. So to separate from the mainstream, it seems you gotta do the wrong thing, or at least [the] image of doing the wrong thing.

Moving forward, where will this film lead us on its transformation from short-to-feature? Do you plan on shooting in Africa?

KE: Of course. I definitely plan on heading to Namibia, South Africa, Congo, Angola and the diamond situation there. And it’s not only limited to that; we’re also heading to where the major diamond cutting takes place: Bombay, India, and then heading to Hong Kong, Israel, and then Antwerp, Belgium, where De Beers’ central processing hub is located. That’s a lot of places to touch-it’s not just asking a few emcees how they feel. I gotta take you on a journey.

In closing, is there anything you’d like to bring up?

KE: Well, what I really wanted to address with this film is the cultural reference, as far as black people, as far as emcees. There’s this stigma that’s attached to bling now, this tackiness. When Fox News says bling, are they applauding you or thumbing their noses at you? Julia Roberts wears diamonds, 50 Cent wears bling. A good example is that Nelly created this song, “Grillz” because he was able to get this money, and wear all this around his face. I’m being affected. Every young brother that’s walking down the street is affected. Everyone attaches what he’s doing to me, and I look at it like buffoonery, just to put it blunt, straight illusion. I think everyone else sees it, but the young kids, they don’t. Wow, big cars, shiny diamonds, success. But this so-called success has massive consequence. People are getting slaughtered, amputated, and put into refugee camps.

The biggest problem with this diamond trade is amputation. Another thing that pushed me to make this film was this story I heard about the President of Sierra Leone. While the struggle was taking place he had asked the country to join hands, to fight against the guerrillas, the Revolutionary United Front. With him saying join hands and come together, the guerrillas decided in the course of like three or four days, to amputate 20- thousand peoples’ hands, put them all in a truck, and dump all the hands in front of the capitol. That’s 40-thousand limbs that were sitting in front of the capitol. It’s barbaric, and I can’t see these cats wearing grillz, and they don’t even know about it. The young kids don’t know about it. It’s about the message: With success comes responsibility.

I’m under the belief that society as a whole is under some big hypnotic trance right now. We’re all doing things that we know are wrong. It’s unbelievable. Anyway, what can people do to raise awareness and consciousness on this topic?

KE: Ask questions. But that’s problematic, too. Diamonds go through so many hands. I hope at some point we just step away from diamonds, stop buying them. De Beers created the slogan, “A Diamond is Forever,” they created the notion that you need a diamond to get married. The Japanese never used diamonds at all in their history and now they’re the second largest consumer of diamonds. Why, 20 to 25 years ago, De Beers decided to market diamonds as much as possible to the Japanese. But, what I also want to stress is there are also alternatives to getting diamonds.

There’s Takara diamonds, diamonds which are created in the lab. They’re not synthetic, they’re actual diamonds created from diamond seeds, carbon under immense pressure and so forth. It shines likes a diamond, it’s hard like a diamond and it tests like a diamond, and it’s 50-percent cheaper. All it takes is one celebrity, you know, Oprah can get on her show and say, “You know what, I’m wearing Dakar diamonds, it’s fabulous.” If Oprah can take a writer who didn’t even write his actual memoirs and make him a millionaire, why not sit down and explain that there’s an alternative and that it work’s just as good? All it takes is Julia Roberts, Paris Hilton, or an NBA player to be like, Look, I shine just as much as you but nobody is dying for it. Hopefully my film will open up a few eyes. Let’s end bling in 2006.

photos by Josh Reinhard / ignore

stills in animation courtesy WGH Films