"I've been held responsible for taxes I know nothing about"
About this Quote
A little shrug of a sentence, but it lands like a bass hit: James Brown frames himself as the guy onstage, not the guy in the back office. "Held responsible" is the key phrase - passive voice that suggests the punishment has already been decided, the verdict delivered, the spotlight turned harsh. Then he tightens the defense with "taxes I know nothing about", a claim that isn’t just ignorance so much as a portrait of celebrity life as controlled chaos: money moving fast, entourages and managers and lawyers forming a human firewall between the talent and the paperwork.
The intent reads as both explanation and performance. Brown isn't offering a spreadsheet; he's offering a narrative the public understands: the artist as laborer, exploited by systems he didn't design and people he trusted. There's subtextual resentment here, too, aimed at the way institutions treat fame as competence. If you can sell out arenas, the thinking goes, you can also run a corporation. Brown pushes back: being a genius at rhythm doesn't make you fluent in the tax code.
Context matters because Brown's career embodies the American contradiction: a Black musician who built an empire in a country that loved his sound but policed his power. Tax trouble becomes a familiar script for stars, but for Brown it also echoes a long history of Black wealth being scrutinized, challenged, and administratively trapped. The line is self-protective, yes, but it also exposes how easily "responsibility" becomes a weapon when the machinery of finance and law decides you should have known better.
The intent reads as both explanation and performance. Brown isn't offering a spreadsheet; he's offering a narrative the public understands: the artist as laborer, exploited by systems he didn't design and people he trusted. There's subtextual resentment here, too, aimed at the way institutions treat fame as competence. If you can sell out arenas, the thinking goes, you can also run a corporation. Brown pushes back: being a genius at rhythm doesn't make you fluent in the tax code.
Context matters because Brown's career embodies the American contradiction: a Black musician who built an empire in a country that loved his sound but policed his power. Tax trouble becomes a familiar script for stars, but for Brown it also echoes a long history of Black wealth being scrutinized, challenged, and administratively trapped. The line is self-protective, yes, but it also exposes how easily "responsibility" becomes a weapon when the machinery of finance and law decides you should have known better.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
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