STILL Miss Me, Rick Ross!

Rick Ross "apologized." And? He can STILL.MISS.ME.

Miss Me, Rick Ross.

PSA to Ricky Rozay and his endorsement of date rape. Miss me, bruh. Miss. Me.

I Been On (Ratchet): Conceptualizing a Sonic Ratchet Aesthetic in Beyonce's "Bow Down"

While listening to Beyonce’s latest single “Bow Down/I Been On” an eyebrow raised in amusement along with a low “woooooord?” I couldn’t believe that Beyonce, Mrs. “Girls-Run-the-World” was talking to bitches and – gasp! – demanding they bow down.

But it wasn’t Bey’s emphatic singing and ad libs that caught my attention. It was the track itself. The track, in all its “H-town vicious” glory, that briefly pulled Beyonce back south off her global stage.

I contextualize Beyonce as a dichotomy of grit and grace, two polarized representations of black femininity that only co-exist via performances of alter ego(s) – i.e. Beyonce/Sasha Fierce. Aisha Durham’s discussion of Beyonce in her article “Check On It” provides a pliable framework for my discussion here. Durham writes: “Beyonce successfully performs a range of Black femininities, speaking at once to the Black working and middle class sensibilities while fulfilling her dynamic roles as both a hip hop belle and a U.S. exotic other globally” (35). The discourses of respectability that Beyonce frequents and consistently navigates are those of visual culture, often limited to what we see of and about Beyonce rather than what we hear.  Durham’s categorization of a belle parallels not only the Madonna/whore complex frequently imposed upon women in popular culture but the antebellum aesthetic of respectability that continues to dictate southern women. An oppositional parallel for black women excluded from this niche of finer womanhood is the highly visible and commodified form of expression that we have come to recognize as (the) ratchet. As scholars like Treva Lindsey, Heidi Lewis, and Brittney Cooper point out, ratchetness is an intervention of sliding contemporary politics of respectability currently in place against women (of color). And, for the sake of this essay, I’d like to hone in on the understanding of ratchet as a southern export, one which frequents popular expression like hip hop. It in this regard that I posit Beyonce broaches a type of “sonic” ratchet in “Bow Down,” using sound to signify not only her southern “ruts” (roots) but utilize an aesthetic that allows her to vindicate her southern black womanhood while sustaining her (visual) global image.

A Church in the (Capitalistic) Wild?

Beef just got sanctified. Philly rapper Meek Mill’s hit song “Amen” was called out as blasphemous by Philly based pastor Jomo Johnson. Johnson called Philly radio stations to boycott Mill’s song because of its vulgarity and distortion of church and religion. Meek Mill’s response? The ever ready, “I’m out here feeding my family.” To (seemingly) add insult to injury, Mill also ‘comes out’ as an atheist. His spiritual coming out parallels that of Frank Ocean’s own admittance to bisexuality, refusing the limiting (hetero)normative discourses organized religion impedes on society, especially the African American community. Intersecting discourses of race and religion in rap is not new. When receiving an award or interviewing, rappers nearly always make sure Jesus makes an appearance right after mama in their acceptance speech. KRS-One’s Hip Hop manifesto The Gospel of Hip Hop (2009) borrows style from the Christian bible and likens hip hop culture to religious faith and practice. I’m intrigued, however, by the increasingly prevalent role of enterprise in which these discourses currently exist. To borrow from Jay and ‘Ye, is hip hop religion’s latest manifestation of a church in the (capitalistic) wild?

ACT OF LOVE FOR TODAY: Sign the Petition to Fire Vanessa Satten!

Your act of love for the day whether single, married, or unsure...Please take a second to sign and spread this petition. EIC Vanessa Satten allowed for Too $hort's "advice" to rape girls to be posted on the XXL magazine site.  Apocalyptic fail. If you don't sign it for yourself, please sign for your daughter, goddaughter, niece, grandbaby, the little girl down the street fighting to be a kid. This is disgusting. She gots to go. 

Sound the (Red Tailed) Alarm

I got the memo about supporting Red Tails its opening weekend by the All Black Everything Coalition. I heeded the call. I embarrassed my husband by talking to the screen like the characters could hear me. I laughed at the awkwardness that was Ne-Yo’s ‘performing voice.’  But I was disconnected from the film. By no means am I suggesting that the narratives of the Tuskegee Airmen are not crucial enough to be brought to the movie screen – HBO’s 1995 retelling of The Tuskegee Airmen was incredibly dope – but something about this rendition irked, poked, and prodded my spirit.  I sighed as I walked out the theatre to the applause of fellow moviegoers. Applause after a movie? That only happens with Tyler Perry or Idris Elba.

FWD'd at the Hands of Persons Unknown

Its perplexing how easy the term lynching and its associations are being so easily thrown around in this present moment of American culture. Considering how 'traditional' lynchings were racialized demonstrations of white supremacy and spectacle at the murder and destruction of black bodies I'm further perplexed by how 'digitized' lynching subverts hegemonic (white?) privilege and its impositions on the black body through voyeurism and anonymity. Transgressive definitions of digital anonymity signify shifting performance scripts of blackness in America's public sphere. The black body, once restricted to a role of anonymous victimization, symbolized a lack of concern for African Americans within a broader context of American life. 

Technology complicates this victim discourse by blurring invisibility politics with subversion of privilege indicative of the voyeurism that frames the black body in this context.   Considering the Amber Cole fiasco, Herman Cain's cry of being digitally lynched, and most recently the Penn State travesty, an intriguing and developing discourse surrounding lynching's 21st century rendition is how anonymity provides a messy framework for maneuvering such privilege and its intersections with respectability politics and shame.  A couple of overarching tropes especially catch my attention:


I. Anonymity as Power
This dimension of negotiating anonymity and power in cyberspace is fairly traditional, considering how few people have ever been convicted of a lynching. It was often written off as murder at the hands of persons unknown. Particularly striking about anonymity and race in cyberspace, however, is how anonymity becomes gendered and subverts hegemonic white privilege and voyeurism as an imposition of black masculine power. Thinking about the Amber Cole video and a group of young black girls' pregnancy pact photos currently circulating across the Internet the young  girls' bodies are immediately accessible and spectated by not only anonymous viewers but made accessible by boys who are never seen (with the exception of the young man receiving oral sex by Cole). Impositions of respectability and responsibility are forced on the girls through essentialized and historical notions of shame attached to black women's sexuality. These impositions are troubled, however, by the girls themselves because of tricky negotiations of the Internet as a celebrated space of invisibility and  the deemed critical distance associated with that invisibility - 'you don't know me. This ain't real.' The complicated and often messy negotiations of voyeurism associated with the black body in these cases are multifaceted - i.e. the girls' viewing of themselves in the mirror and in the camera intending to distribute the photo via text or MMS, the viewers of the photo, and the girls' sexual partners and fathers of their babies. How, then, can we invest in such static invisibility and shame politics when these types of sexual and personal expression are fluid and outside of these boundaries?


II. The Digitized Cultural Erotic
My analysis of this trope is still in its development stages but it speaks to a growing interest about technology's role as an agent of this current blip in the trajectory of black sexuality discourse. Aside from an exhibition of power, historic lynchings heavily invested in paroling and (re)claiming a believed overstated black sexuality, especially black men. Controlling the 'threat' of black sexuality entailed severely violent reactions, many of which at the hands of privileged yet unknown lynch mob members. The 'technology' associated with these attacks was paranoia and mouth-to-mouth spread accusations resulting in a mob of white angst. I'm curious about how this angst transcribes for this current moment  of American culture where eroticism is open but racial angst is deemed irrelevant and displaced because of the anxiety surrounding an open and public acknowledgement of race.


A chapter from Siobhan Brooks' Unequal Desires, a brilliant study of cultural and sexual capital in the sex industry, discusses the implications of technology on what she calls "erotic capital," a body's "value based on a socially constructed ideal model of beauty/attractiveness held by dominant culture" (6). Brooks' discussion of erotic capital is in conversation with Tricia Rose's observations about women and erotic expression in similar hypermasculine spaces like Hip Hop, observing how women in Hip Hop use the erotic as a source of power and are not restricted to erotic expression as a form of victimization. Pairing technology and youth culture with Brooks' and Rose's observations about the shifting cultural landscape of spectatorship and ownership of black womens' bodies is a useful framework for considering how today's young girls', members of what I call the android generation, view their sexuality and how it is expressed in a digital age. Is it possible to consider the Internet as a space of sex-positive black girls' expression without victimized and therefore stigmatic attachment to shame and (lack of ) respectability politics? Or will these young girls continue to be digitally lynched by being forwarded at the hands of persons unknown?