What’s good y’all?
This week we shakin dem haters off with "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand.
Howard Roark is da only bruh in his architecture school who wanna shake things up.
Errybody else just a buncha by-the-book hacks who think building design gotta rep tradition.
But Roark don’t flow with dat mess — he got his own vision and don’t give a damn what they think.
Brotha keep it so real that the school expels his ass, straight up.
So he head to New York and start workin for an architect named Henry Cameron.
Even though Cameron’s rep ain’t so hot among the big dawgs anymore,
Howard think he's the trillest architect in the game.
Meanwhile, Howard’s homie from school, Peter Keating, just got a job up at a swag architecture firm,
workin fo some famous rich dude named Guy Francon.
Roark and Cameron always makin real dank-ass designs, but nobody really cares about inspired work,
so they gotta keep on da hustle jus to scrape by.
Whereas dat scrub, Peter, is able to stack mad grands just by smooth-talkin peeps and designin em pretty
weak-ass buildings.
Before you know it, dude becomes full partner — even though he accidentally murked a guy to get there!
Peter feel bad... but not when bad feels this good! Yeah!
Eventually, Cameron retires, and Roark try to do his own thang.
But that don’t last long, cuz he just keep it so damn real with his customers —
tellin em he don’t give a sh*t bout what they want — it's his design o’ nuthin.
Eventually, he gotta get down 'n dirty and start grindin hard at a granite quarry owned by Peter’s boss, Francon.
Peter been busy too — busy creepin’ on Francon’s daughter, Dominique.
Roark see Dom, and they start vibin each other.
Then one night, Roark go to da phat crib she stayin at, and rapes her —
though she say later, maybe it was just what she wanted. That's what da book say.
So, she try to find Roark lookin fo anotha go, but brotha dipped out to New York to design anotha building.
Dominique ends up headin to the city too,
and finally figure out that Roark ain’t just some granite quarry hustler.
As a girl who knows a thing or two about architecture, she thinks his work is off the chain.
They start hookin up on the DL, but in her public life, she try to destroy Roark's career.
Girl got a serious hater streak to her.
But she ain’t da only one —
there be this writer dude named Ellsworth M. Toohey who tryna ruin Howard’s rep.
All this mess cuz both of em can’t stand how he can stay so legit in a world full of posers and fakers.
Toohey comes up with a plan to break Roark once and fo’ all:
he convinces some dumbass to hire Roark to build a temple and then sue him after he see what Roark built.
Up in court, all da top dawgs of architecture roll up to dat stand, and they just run they mouths, talkin sh*t bout Roark.
Dominique don’t say nuthin, but on da inside, she know Roark is da only real deal up in dat courtroom.
When Roark lose the case and end up cashed out on the struggle again, Dominique says,
”Man, f**k it! If I live in a world where real people get sh*t on, and hacks get da good life,
then I’m just gonna do the worst damn thing I can think of. First, no more Roark booty calls on da reg.
And second, I’m gonna marry that b*tchass, Peter Keating."
Later, Dominique meet this rich newspaper man named Gail Wynand.
Dude so into Dom that he literally buys her from Peter.
Wynand thinks Roark's work is really fly, so they become boys,
even though he don’t know nuthin bout what went down between him and his woman.
Eventually Keating lose all his rep, and errybody start seein him for the tool he is.
Boy gets one last shot at a housing project and realize he need Roark, if he gonna do it right.
Roark agree to help a brotha out under two conditions —
Numba 1. They gotta do it his way, and
Numba 2. He stays anonymous.
They shake on it, but later Roark find out dat they messed with his vision.
So what does he do? He burns dat muthaf**ka down.
Da whole damn country hatin on Howard now, but at this point, he jus used to it.
Wynand finally step up and defends his bro in the newspaper.
But when da heat comes down, and Wynand gotta choose between Roark or his business,
he like “Roark who?” and throws his ass under the bus.
Seems like it’s all over for Roark,
but at the trial, he rocks the mic, sayin how important it is to be true to nobody else but yo self.
The Jury lets him off, Roark and Dominique become a thing again,
and Wynand ask him to build one more building —
a building so tight it gonna rep all da noble things about mankind.
When it comes to keepin it 100 all day erry day, it jus don’t get no realer than Howard Roark.
Matta fact, Rand say da reason she wrote dis book was to portray the most legit man you could think of —
one dat completely reppin her homebrew philosophy called "objectivism."
"This is the motive and purpose of my writing; the projection of an ideal man.
The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal, as an end in itself —
to which any didactic, intellectual or philosophical values contained in a novel are only the means."
Objectivism preachin a couple things like: logic, self-interest, capitalism, atheism, personal responsibility,
and as far as reality go — what you see is what you get.
So that’s a tight philosophy 'n all, but what does this look like in the flesh?
Well first off — Roark go hard in the paint when it comes to his integrity.
To this dude, keepin it real means dedicating your life to one idea, and everything —
what you think, what you do, all of it — gotta rep this idea.
No matter how raw it get when the haters start hatin, he don’t budge an inch.
Cuz stickin by that idea is what makes you you.
Most people can’t roll like Roark, though.
Erry single day, da world ask people to compromise their values, and most just let it slide —
bit by bit — til they ain’t nuthin left of their self.
"... they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they're not what you met last.
In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict —
and they call it growth. At the end there's nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed."
If bein true to yo self is numba 1, then you can’t be givin a sh*t bout what errybody else think, like dat boy, Peter.
People like him spend they whole lives worryin bout how they look in other people’s eyes.
To them, it don’t matter how things are, only how it seem.
Wynand is even worse. He ain’t even trippin bout how errybody else see him — he want power over em.
But brotha soon recognize dat if you spend all yo life tryna possess others,
it’s yo ass that ends up gettin owned.
"[Wynand] walked at random. He owned nothing, but he was owned by any part of the city. It was right that the
city should not direct his way and that he should be moved by the pull of chance corners. Here I am, my
masters, I am coming to salute you and acknowledge, wherever you want me, I shall go as I'm told.
I'm the man who wanted power."
But on the real — can somebody like Roark really exist in a world this crooked?
Well it sho ain’t easy when literally errybody — even yo so-called “homies” — tryna take you down.
I mean, just look at these haters —
Toohey messin with him cuz he want da world to know that ideals don’t mean nuthin,
Dominique think da world is too much of a twisted place for him to exist,
and Wynand, quite simply, thinks a dude as real as Roark just can't exist, period.
Crazy thing is, it’s him who ends up breakin, when he try to live up to Roark's baller status.
Sho, Roark's will, determination, and heroism are all pretty clutch.
But dat don’t mean it’s all good — there’s plenty of jacked up sh*t bout Rand’s philosophy, too.
One of da worst things is da way Rand talks bout pity:
"But this was pity — this complete awareness of a man without worth or hope, this sense of finality, of the not to
be redeemed. There was shame in this feeling — his own shame that he should have to pronounce such
judgement upon a man, that he should know an emotion which contained no shred of respect. This is pity,
he thought, and then he lifted his head in wonder. He thought there must be something terribly wrong with a
world in which this monstrous feeling is called a virtue."
Look, I don’t know what an “ideal man” would look like —
but I sho as hell know he wouldn’t say feelin sorry for others is bullsh*t —
or dat bein generous to others is fo b*tches.
No matter who you are or where you come from,
somebody along the way has helped you get to where you are.
All OGs know that.
Thanks for watching, y'all!