Summer 17 has been a hotbed of a hot ass mess. Between the atrocity that is the current presidential administration pushing backward retrograde policies intended to further marginalize and disenfranchise women and communities of color (especially those who are poor, undocumented, and LGBTQ) and the continued looming threat of the domestic terrorism of white supremacy, […]
Category: Music
Lemonade, Sweet Tea, and Dirty Laundry on the Clothesline
Homemade lemonade was relief from the humid heat of North Carolina summers. Sweet and sour lemon water always tasted better after it had been sitting for a few days, bathed in the sun so the sugar syrup could fully absorb the lemon pieces floating at the top of a see through pitcher, like a see […]
Misogyny and Infamy: On the Erasure of Dark Skinned Black Women As Love Interests in Straight Outta Compton
Straight Outta Compton is clearly doing the damn thing at the box office. Since its debut about a month ago, the film has become the highest grossing music biopic in history. And no shade, but shade…given the music biopics of late…that Whitney biopic that should have been called the Whitney and Bobby Show, that Aaliyah […]
Dear Cee Lo
Trigger Warning: Discussions of sexual violence below. Dear Cee Lo, Dude, seriously? I am so disappointed in your actions that I almost don’t even know where to begin. You have just gotten off from some charges stemming from a 2012 accusation of sexual assault. And rather than quietly going off into the night as one […]
An Ontology of CRUNK: Theorizing (the) Turn Up
For your #TurnUp Tuesday pleasure, I thought I’d do a little Crunk theorizing today. As y’all already know, CRUNK is a generative term, a percussive term that centrally points to the kind of energy generated by putting disparate elements together like hip hop and feminism or black nationalism and feminism or crunk and feminism. […]
Angels and Ghosts
Every day I walk or drive through historic Black neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia where upwards of 50% of residential properties are vacant, abandoned and sometimes burned down (but not demolished). I see empty buildings that used to be schools, recreation centers, community centers, and businesses. I see extraordinary flooding each time it rains; rushing water […]
lovers rock: the crunk feminist summer mixtape series
I refuse to cede this summer to cruelty. I have rubbed the roof of my mouth raw with pomegranate hard candies. I have learned how to take rapid-fire selfies at flattering angles. Underwhelmed by artisanal popsicles, politics and my own work ethic, I have brooded. At my best I have ridden the 2 train through […]
this is how we do it: the crunk feminist summer mixtape series
Josephine Baker famously fled the U.S. for the reprieve from racism post World War I France provided. She called France her home for the rest of her life but continued to perform stateside. She also protested. She addressed the masses at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and juxtaposed the measure of […]
soul glow: the crunk feminist summer mixtape series
Summers ago, the sage Cee Lo implored us to “drop the top and let the sunshine in.” But we don’t all ride around and get it: some of bus, bike and stride. I pound the pavement in part because I was terrorized by a jheri-curled narcoleptic on my mid-aught subway commutes. Each morn this ostensible, […]
the light of us: a mother’s day mix
call it our craziness even, call it anything. it is the life thing in us that will not let us die. Poet Lucille Clifton’s language for lineage was cherished. “roots,” a poem from her 1974 collection An Ordinary Woman named it light and I choose to liken it to mothering. it is the light in us it […]