Conspiracy theories ebb and flow in waves associated with how confident people feel about their social environments. When times are hard and unemployment rates are high, individuals get creative in where they look for explanations. It is no accident that talented, powerful, popular, and rich African American male rappers, along with female artists, are being targeted by these claims.
While the history of popularization is a history of regular folk learning about other regular revolutionizing folk and imitating them, comic book histories like The Wordy Shipmates do their part in ensuring that the next generation knows more about Beyoncé than Byzantium.
