Compared to What: I am Better Than Those Motherfuckers and They Know it, was inspired by a conversation between AfriCOBRA founders Wadsworth Jarrell and Jeff Donaldson. Jarrell took the concept of “I am better than those motherfuckers and they know it,” and decided to reference the lack of credit given to Black musicians for their artistic creations; specifically in reference to Blues and Jazz.

Wadsworth is choosing a genre created and perfected by Black musicians but not widely regarded during the late 1960's and 1970s. Jarrell puts the Beatles in the background of the painting to exemplify the most iconic representation of this discrepancy.

Consisting of graffiti style words and letters in vibrant "Cool Ade” colors, Wadsworth includes the letter B repeated throughout the composition—a common motif in his works and suggestive of the phrase "Black is Beautiful." The main figure is an African American man, sitting and playing a guitar while the Beatles exist behind him in the background. The title of the painting “I am Better Than Those Motherfuckers and They Know it," reads out to the left of the main figure. Wadsworth makes this difficult to read because as he says "it is an intricate component of the form."

Wadsworth is deliberate in Compared to What: I am Better Than Those Motherfuckers and They Know it in his desire to celebrate Black musicians. An important example of AfriCOBRA, an aesthetic and collective rooted in the culture of Chicago's Black neighborhoods of the late 60's and 70's at the height of the civil rights, Black power, and Black arts movements, Compared to What: I am Better Than Those Motherfuckers and They Know it captures the rhythmic dynamism of Black culture and social life.

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PROVENANCE
Collection of the Artist

EXHIBITIONS
AFRICOBRA I, 1970, Studio Museum in Harlem
ARFICOBRA I, National Center Museum of Afro-American Artists and Culture, Boston, MA, 1970
AFRICOBRA I, Black Expo, Chicago, 1970-71.
Heritage: Wadsworth and Jae Jarrell, 2017, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, USA
From Vietnam to Berlin, 2018, Asia Culture Centre, Gwangju, South Korea
Africobra50, 2018, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, USA
Africobra: Messages to the People, 2018, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL, USA
Africobra: Nation Time, 2019, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy

LITERATURE
W. Jarrell, "AfriCobra; Experimental Thought Toward a School of Thought," Durham, 2020, illustrated p. 115
J.M. Hayes, "AfriCobra; Messages to the People", New York, 2020, illustrated p. 109