9 Years Ago, Today...

I've been quite open about the fact that father-hood has fundementally changed my life and the work that I do. My oldest daughter--the "baby girl diva"--turned 9 years-old today and I thought I'd take a moment to acknowledge how much she means to me. The essay below was originally published @ Africana.com on the spring of 2003. An expanded version of it appears as chapter 4 of New Black Man.


Bringing Up Daddy
by Mark Anthony Neal

We were heartbroken. I was at a conference in Houston when my wife finally got through to me by cell phone to tell me the news that all potential adoptive parents dread. Folk privy to the adoption process are all too familiar with the possibility that at the last hour, a woman, who months earlier agreed to give her unborn child up for adoption, will take one look at her newborn baby and change her mind about giving the child up for adoption. My wife and I kept our impending adoption a secret to just about everyone including parents, close friends and even our four-year-old daughter, for that very reason. So here I was alone, on the brink of tears, walking through a FAO Schwarz toy store in Houston, looking at the toys and stuffed animals I wasn’t going to buy for our newborn daughter.

I was also relieved. Camille Monet, as we had planned to name the newborn girl, was to be our second adopted child. My wife and I had talked for some time about adopting a second child, but the reality was that I wasn’t looking forward to having another baby in the house. The often prohibitive cost of adoption conspired to keep Misha Gabrielle our only child, as I looked forwarded to giving her all of the love and support that come with being an only-child (as I was). My ambivalence about adopting a second child caused me to revisit my hesitancy to adopt four years earlier.

My wife and I spent five years or so trying to conceive, including numerous consultations about in vitro fertilization. Adoption was always a last resort and one that I was prepared to be just that, as we waited for the research around in vitro fertilization to improve to the point that it was a viable option for us. In our early thirties at the time my wife was unwilling to wait and in one tear-filled episode finally convinced me that adoption was our only option. At the time I was like so many black men, who viewed the process of getting a women pregnant as an affirmation of our masculinity—think of how many black men describe their kids as their seeds—particularly in a society that has historically denied us the fullest expression of our masculinity. Thus the idea that I couldn’t produce “seed”, somehow meant that something was wrong with me—that I was less than a man. As long as we didn’t adopt, I could always say that our childlessness was a “lifestyle choice.”

My visions of fatherhood and manhood, for that matter, were naturally influenced by the black man I called “daddy.” Old-school in every since of the word, from his Georgia-bred slowness and assortment of Old Spice bottles to the way he counted his money—in the dark—while my mother and I slept, I can’t say that my father taught me anything about fatherhood other than the fact that a good father—a good man—put in a days work and provided for his family. Save Friday nights in the summer when he allowed me to walk with him to the bodega to get beer, cigarettes and pork rinds and the Sunday mornings when I shared the sounds of the Mighty Clouds of Joy, The Dixie Hummingbirds, B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland with him, I can’t say that I remember my father as parenting presence. Certainly he was of a generation of men who accepted that things like changing diapers, boiling bottles and making formula was considered women’s work.

Because adoption caused me to reassess my ideas of what black manhood meant—give serious thought to the very rigid ways that we define black masculinity in America—I was also forced reconsider what roles fathers play in the parenting process. Though I had considered myself a feminist long before I became a father, it was the birth and adoption of my daughter that forced me to understand that a shared parenting process was as important as notions that women should get equal pay for equal work. It certainly wasn’t easy. I’ve never been dutiful about picking up after myself and my wife has always had to prod me (sometimes under threats of violence) to do things like mop the kitchen floor or even take out the trash. And I guess that somewhere in my upbringing I accepted that housework, including childcare, was the kind of domestic work that was naturally assigned to the women in the house. Virtually every family-oriented television show I’ve watched in the last 37 years had confirmed that fact to me.

In steps the brown-skinned shortie, who we affectionately referred to as the “baby-girl diva” when she was a baby. Misha Gabrielle was born pre-mature (a premie!), coming into the world three weeks before she was supposed to be here. She was indeed our miracle baby, as we brought her home with us less than a month after we first walked into the adoption agency to get information about the process (nobody ever believes us when we tell them this). It’s like she knew we were the adoptive parents she was supposed to be with and willed herself into the world before scheduled just so we would be the ones to adopt her. I can honestly say that she has fundamentally changed my life. The very spirit that brought her into the world early she brought to her role as my daughter as if it was her ordained duty to make me an engaged father and a better man.

The demands of my wife’s professional career often meant that I couldn’t simply see myself as a part-time baby-sitter (as one brother once described spending time with his kids) or the one who just picked up our daughter from school, but as a co-nurturer, who for most of my daughter’s life has prepared the family dinner, done the grocery shopping (that’s an article unto itself), given my daughter her nightly baths and put her down to sleep at night—things I can rarely remember my own father doing. Granted my dad worked a 60-hour week (ten hours a day, six days a week), but even if his schedule had been less rigid, there was never an expectation that he would be more engaged parent. Both my parents were the product of a generation of blacks who really believed that black men were incapable of playing such a role, so even when those women felt imposed upon at time, there was little drama when say the baby was crying and homie sat there motionless in the living room drinking a beer and watching the baseball game, while mom was in the kitchen cooking Sunday dinner. I’m not saying that all black families function this way thirty years ago, but it was clearly an accepted trend.

Because of my flexible work hours as a college professor and writer, I was often the one charged with daycare duty and sick days and it was during those many, many hours riding around in the car listening to Veggie Tales tapes and Lenny Kravitz, sitting in Starbucks reading Faith Ringhold picture books, walking across my campus and playing tackle in the living room that we formed the ultimate father-daughter bond. I began to refer to her as my “Soul Sister”. She literally helped save my life as the demands of parenting forced me to get treatment for a debilitating case of Sleep Apnea that was threatening to deprive me of my energy, spirit and ultimately a healthy future.

Ironically I’ve found myself offended on those occasions that folk assume that the time I put in with and for my daughter is somehow an aberration—like when I go into children’s clothing stores to buy a cute pair of shoes or a sweater for my daughter and the salesperson ask me if I want a gift-box as if the only reason why a man would be in a store like that was because he was buying a gift. Even worse those folks who see just how attentive I am to my daughter and want to bestow the Nobel Peace Prize of parenting on me simply they’ve never seen a black man in that light. And I admit there are times that I have to resist patting myself on the back for doing the kinds of things, that society would have us believe, black man were genetically incapable of. What I do is not exceptional—it come with the territory of being a parent in the 21st century. When I talk with so many of my friends and colleagues who are fathers or see the number of public figures like Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker or New Jersey Net star Jason Kidd alter their lifestyles so that their children can be part of their professional life, I realize that there are many black men, who are dramatically trying change how black men view the parenting process. I swear I nearly break out in tears every time I hear Talib Kweli’s “Joy” where he shares the details of the birth of his two children.

Four-year-old Misha Gabrielle was with my wife and I the day after Thanksgiving as we sat in a local restaurant. It was our first time “out” since we heard that we would not be adopting a second child. Symbolically the day out was an acknowledgement that we were finally moving on from a very painful and disappointing situation. It was while sitting there, as we thought about using the money we set aside for the adoption to plan a trip to Disney World, that we got the call on my cell phone from our lawyer, letting us know that the birth-mother had again changed her mind and decided to go ahead with the adoption. Camille Monet has been with us since December of last year (a day before my birthday). These days my notions about my masculinity are firmly tied to how good of a parent I am to my two daughters. Despite my hang-ups initially having the new baby in the house has been a breeze and I’m more confident than ever in my skills as a father and co-nurturer. It is me who is now asking my wife, when are we going to adopt the next one. I’m a house full of women (included the two female cats) and I’m thinking it’s time to bring a boy into them mix, if only so that they’ll be another black boy in the world, who will grow up to become an engaged father.

***

Mark Anthony Neal is the author of four books, including New Black Man. Neal is currently working on a study of black popular culture and black masculinity titled The TNI-Mixtape (NYU Press). He is Professor of African and African-American Studies at Duke University. “Bringing Up Daddy” was originally published at Africana.com in 2003

Remembering Jon Lucien

A Song for Lucien (for Jon Lucien 1942-2007)
by Mark Anthony Neal

That Jon Lucien’s name is rarely evoked in casual conversation about Jazz and Soul vocalists of the past two generations is perhaps fitting for an artist who was often cast as an outsider. It wasn’t just the affectations of the Caribbean male that marked Lucien as an outsider when he first emerged in 1970 with his debut recording I Am Now, but his embodiment of something else—that something else that few, including his record labels, could ever quite wrap their heads around. If so much of the Soul music of the early 1970s yearned for the trinkets of a newly formed freedom—including the freedoms derived from uninhibited sexual passion—then Jon Lucien’s music, his rich Caribbean baritone and his cosmopolitan swagger were evidence of an always, already freedom.

It was all too easy to compare Jon Lucien to Barry White, Teddy Pendergrass and, much later, Luther Vandross (the sheer heft of their vocals would have it no other way), but in reality Lucien’s peers were song stylists like Johnny Hartman and Jimmy Scott—both tragically forgotten, even as Scott (and his natural falsetto) continues to toil in obscurity and Hartman remains the only vocalist to have collaborated with John Coltrane. What distinguished Lucien from those men was his ability to translate the gravitas of their instruments into something that was accessible and tangible, albeit “foreign” in both the literal and commercial sense, to audiences in the 1970s.

Simply put, Jon Lucien conjured sex in a way that was only comparable to the onscreen work of the late Calvin Lockhart - who, like his Caribbean contemporary, never quite found the vehicles to support his considerable talents. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was difficult for male Caribbean artists to exist beyond the huge shadows of Sir Sidney and King Harry; Lucien and Lockhart, I would argue, suffered accordingly. Ironically Lucien first came to the states in the 1960s playing bass in the Catskills behind a trio that once performed as part of the Harry Belafonte Folk Singers.

Nevertheless Lucien’s second recording, Rashida (1973), with its lush arrangements, unbridled percussive energies and Lucien’s vocals in fine form, ranks as one of the great “Soul” albums from the period. And yet to call Lucien’s music “soul” or “jazz” does a disservice to the music. This is something that was not lost on Lucien as he struggled with his record company at the time. As Lucien told Richard Harrington a few years ago, “There was a lack of vision, especially when we did the Rashida album… everybody was saying, ‘what do we call this music?’” Such questions kept RCA from giving Lucien’s recordings full promotional support, particularly in an era when many labels were still getting a handle on their nascent black music divisions. If the music didn’t sound like Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, The O’Jays or Aretha Franklin, many labels didn’t believe there was an audience for it.

Read Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Chatting Up Elvis

Love Me Tender:
The Complex Legacy of Elvis Presley
by Mark Anthony Neal

While we can lament that it was Presley’s whiteness that made him the lasting icon that he his, his legacy is much more complicated. Indeed, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and notably Ray Charles were never gonna achieve Presley’s status, in large part, because they were black and could not circulate through American culture in what was still a critically racist society. Ironically it was Presley’s embrace of rhythm and blues music that created a wider audience for it and allowed many of those aforementioned black artists to cross-over. Ultimately though, the fervor that exists over Presley, thirty-years after his death, has to do with what he represents to those who hark back to a more comforting view of American society. The young Elvis Presley is a reminder of that last moment of American innocence—before the watershed moments of the Civil Rights Movement, before the Vietnam war became the definitive generational divide, and before the End of Camelot. As America is continuously rendered as anything but innocent—and legitimately so—Elvis Presley’s legacy offers a comforting cocoon.

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

***

On-Point w/Tom Ashbrook (WBUR Boston)

Where Elvis Lives Now
Aired: Thursday, August 16, 2007 11-12PM ET

Thirty years ago today, Elvis Presley died at Graceland, a drugged and bloated mess. Fifty years ago this year - young and wild - the gyrating electric Elvis was at the top of his game, astonishing the country.

In between was a career that crossed racial lines, launched rock and roll, thrilled fans, broke hearts and defined 20th century celebrity in America. "Before Elvis," said John Lennon, "there was nothing." Well, not exactly.

But what about after? In the house of American culture, is Elvis still in the building?

·	Jay Sweet, Editor-at-Large of Paste Magazine
·	Brian Mansfield, Nashville Correspondent for USA Today
·	Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of African-American Studies at Duke University
·	Joann Smith, President of the Elvis Fever Fan Club

Listen Here

***

Down With the King: Black Folks & Elvis
by Michael Gonzales

Elvis Presley was my nigga: forget the fact that on his dying day on August 16th, 1977, the so-called King of Rock 'n' Roll was grossly overweight and popping more pills than a pharmaceutical student. Definitely, it might be best to ignore the oft spoken truths that to this day linger like an unchained melody that define the master of hypnotic hips and unmovable hair as a momma's boy who boned teenaged girls years before R. Kelly was born, munched peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and blasted TV sets in the hallowed hotel rooms above the neon glow of Vegas.

Read Full Essay at Blackadelic Pop

Faith in Rhythm (for Max Roach)

photo by John Abbott

Faith in Rhythm
by Mark Anthony Neal

Perhaps the word that most captures the significance of Max Roach is faith. Yes the faith, in those early days, that he would always keep time as the winded lyricists and at least one fickle Monk, dared the time/space continuum to challenge their intellects—one more time. But there was also Max Roach’s faith; Faith that the rhythm would deliver the genius of a generation of “old southern men, full of northern pain”—that the rhythm would always deliver music that we could dream to and finally that the rhythm would deliver even a grain of freedom—“We Insist!”—for those whose only possessions were their bodies and the rhythms contained within those bodies.

Read More at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

What's An R&B Girl to Do? Deborah Cox and Amel Larrieux

What's An R&B Girl to Do?
by Mark Anthony Neal

Let me be clear upfront; there’s little that I personally find “girlish” about Deborah Cox or Amel Larrieux. They are, by all accounts, fully grown women. But grown-women—grown black women—seemingly are of little value in the world of contemporary R&B, and increasingly within commercial culture in general—unless they can sell cleaning products or deliver punch-lines with the panache of a tired cleaning woman. Thus the 30-somethings Cox and Larrieux find themselves out of favor to the fickle audiences that the music industry has coalesced around contemporary R&B and have to find new venues to ply their trade. While generational peers have either been musically born again (Kelly Price and Chante Moore) or steadfastly trying to compete with coquettish divas five or ten years their junior (Tamia, Brandy and Monica immediately come to mind), Cox and Larrieux have surprisingly staked out a claim in the world of jazz standards.

Deborah Cox has always possessed a lovely, if not strikingly distinct, vocal instrument. And while she never simply blended in with the crowd, she also is not the kind of artist that audiences, save hardcore fans, have missed. In this sense Cox’s decision to take on the legacy of Dinah Washington with Destination Moon entails less risk than it might have for vocalists on that next commercial tier and likely provides a genuine opportunity for Cox to develop a new audience. Washington is a formidable figure; her ability to brawl with the rhythm & blues boys of the late 1940s and sweetly nuance big-band arrangements on signature tunes (now standards) like “What a Difference a Day Makes” and “This Bitter Earth” made Washington one of the unique female vocalist of the 20th century. Cox wisely chooses the more softer tones in Washington’s oeuvre—covering the aforementioned “This Bitter Earth," “What a Difference a Day Makes,” and “Destination Moon”—though she does more than credible renditions of “Misery” and “Baby You’ve Got What it Takes.”

In this regard Destination Moon recalls an earlier Washington tribute album. Arguably Aretha Franklin’s Unforgettable: A Tribute to Dinah Washington was the great Aretha album, before she broke through commercially 40 years ago this summer with I Have Never Loved a Man.

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

...That Presidential VIBE

from NPR's New & Notes w/Farai Chideya

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is on the cover of Vibe magazine's September issue, the first time a politician has appeared there. Vibe Editor-in-Chief Danyel Smith speaks with Farai Chideya about the honor bestowed upon the senator from Illinois.

Listen Here

***

Obama Q&A with Jeff Chang (the full transcript)

Forever Ms. Simone

Finding Forever, Finding Nina
by Mark Anthony Neal

Though Nina Simone died little more than four years ago and is 40 years removed from her commercial peak, her music—and spirit—continues to be recalled and resurrected in the music of the hip-hop generation. The most recent occasion is Common’s just released Finding Forever, where his “Misunderstood” (with brilliant production from Devo Springsteen) is framed by a live version of Ms. Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Understood”. It is arguably the most arresting (though “Driving Me Wild” with Lily Allen comes close) tune on Finding Forever. And such is the case in virtually every popular instance that the hip-hop generation summons Ms. Simone’s essence.

More than a decade ago it was Lauryn Hill who referenced Ms. Simone in a bid to attach some relevance to her presence in an industry largely tailored to young men with little motivation to be creative. “I could do what you do, EASY!” Hill told her peers, “so while you imitatin' Al Capone/I be Nina Simone and defecating on your microphone.” There are those of us who wonder what the world might be like if El Hajj Malik El Shabazz or Ella Baker would have circulated through American culture to the extent that second-rate rappers and NFL players on paid administrative leave do so now. Hill’s lyrics were a reminder that when Ms. Simone had the mic in her hand and indeed had the attention of the nation, she made real, real.

With the exception of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit," Ms. Simone’s “Mississippi Goddamn” ranks as one of the most incendiary songs every recorded by a black artist in the United States (though if thinking across the Afropolitan landscape, we’d of course have to mention Fela Kuti and Robert Nesta Marley). And not to discount the work of artists like Chuck D or Paris, but neither was going to be physically lynched or murdered for recording “Welcome to the Terrordome” or “Bush Killa.” The threats to Ms. Simone’s body, spirit and livelihood were real as she told the American public that “I hope you die, die like flies” in response to their failure to come to grips with the so-called race question.

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

With Willie By His Side

Hell on Earth

from the Afrosphere Bloggers Association

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Austin, TX - August, 5 2007- Fresh off a battle with Black Entertainment Television, Gina McCauley isn’t slowing down on her blog, What About Our Daughters? McCauley is outraged over Al Sharpton’s planned ” Day of Outrage” scheduled for August 7, 2007, also sponsored by the BloggingWhileBrown Blog. Her next targets are Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the NAACP and other African American elites who have been noticeably silent about what may be one of the most horrific crimes committed against a Black woman in recent history, she’s talking about the June 18th gang rape of a 35-year- old woman that took place in Dunbar Village, a housing project in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The woman was raped repeatedly for over three hours by at least ten African American youths, while they brutally beat her son. Eventually the woman and son were forced to lie naked together in their bathtub and the woman was forced under gunpoint to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son before the attackers poured cleaning solution on them, burning the mother’s skin and blinding her son. Not a single neighbor called the police and the woman and her son were forced to walk alone to a hospital. Only three of the alleged attackers have been arrested and residents of Dunbar Village aren’t talking to police.

Read more...

Read more about the case:

Where is the outcry now?

After a Brutal Attack, Many Hope for Change but Few Expect It

Commentary: In What’s Possibly the Worst Black-on-Black Crime in Decades, Why are Al & Jesse So Silent?

Compared to What? MeShell Channels McD

Compared to What?
by Mark Anthony Neal

A few years ago, after the release of Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, I made the point that MeShell Ndegeocello—revolutionary Soul singer—was the artistic progeny of Eugene McDaniels. To many, McDaniels is still an obscure figure, though his composition “Feel Like Making Love” is one of Roberta Flack’s most well known hits. Unfortunately McDaniels was not too obscure for former Vice President Spiro Agnew, who was rumored to give Ahmet Ertegun, the late founder of Atlantic Records, a call in the early 1970s to complain about the criticisms of the Nixon administration that McDaniels lodged throughout his underground classic Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse. McDaniels was dropped from the label shortly thereafter.

Ironically, McDaniels’s most stinging critique, “Compared to What?”, was not even on Headless Heroes, but was recorded a few years earlier by the aforementioned Flack (on her debut First Take) and Eddie Harris and Les McCann, who recorded a live version at Montreux in 1969. Lyrics like “The President, he's got his war/Folks don't know just what it's for/Nobody gives us rhyme or reason Have one doubt, they call it treason” were just as politically relevant in 2003 when the Coca-Cola company remixed to song for their “Real, Compared to What?” campaign, which featured Common, Musiq and Donnie, among others. I can’t imagine that McDaniels was happy about his artistic legacy was being reduced to selling brown caffeinated fizz.

Read the Full Essay at Critical Noir @ Vibe.com

William Jelani Cobb on John Edwards

Is Populism All That Popular?
by William Jelani Cobb

We know, or ought to know by now, that race is the plot twist in the American storyline. Take a fairly straightforward national coming-of-age tale and factor in that four-letter word and it coils into unpredictable kinks and convolutions. That said, not even the most studied observer of this unfolding epic would've predicted our present circumstance – one in which a Southern white man with great hair finds himself trailing a black man and a white woman in the presidential polls.

Of all the Democrats running, John Edwards is the only Southern white man and he has the nerve to be a populist at that. He recently concluded a multi-state "poverty tour," which, in light of Hurricane Katrina's extended aftermath made an important statement. Coming off the GOP's gutting of Medicare, failures on education, attempts to hijack social security, support for outsourcing and ongoing regressive taxation schemes it would seem that Edwards' focus on poverty would generate a good deal of electoral traction. Instead it probably ensures that he will be unelectable.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater orchestrated the most successful failure in the history of American politics. Goldwater was crushed by Lyndon B. Johnson but the former's opposition to civil rights provided a roadmap for the future of the GOP. Nixon's famed "Southern Strategy" in 1968 entailed pointing out to whites in the former Confederacy that the Democrats were soft on race. Going back to the days of Roosevelt, the growing political profile of Northern black voters made it increasingly difficult for the Democratic Party to hold onto working class and poor whites – especially in the South. The emergence of "Reagan Democrats" sixteen years after Goldwater was partly a product of that dynamic. (It was no coincidence that Reagan gave a campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi – the site where the civil rights workers Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner disappeared – and announced to the crowd that he had "always favored states' rights.") In short, the GOP realized that race could be the wedge that cracked the Democratic Party's base in half.

Edwards is basically trying to run a reverse of the 1968 Southern strategy. He has pinned his hopes for the White House on an attempt to prove that the Republicans are soft on class. On the surface it would seem that John Edwards has grabbed a bullhorn to inform America that the sky is blue. But sometimes the obvious still needs to be pointed out. The racial plot twist has created a bizarre scenario in which an unemployed factory worker and the CEO who fired him enter the booth and vote for the same candidate. An alliance of rich people and poor people working together to keep it that way.

Read Full Essay at EbonyJet.com

***

William Jelani Cobb, Ph.D. is an associate professor of history at Spelman College. His third book, now available from NYU Press: To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic

Freedom’s Desire
by Mark Anthony Neal

“I’m someone who will get heated about politics” rapper Pharoahe Monch tells Time Out New York’s Jesse Serwer, adding that “then the next minute , I just want to lay back with a glass of Hennessy and suck on some big ol’ titties.” To which critic Jaylah Burrell astutely observes that Monch “exhibits a Black square male anxiety that undermines the cool pose he’s trying so hard to assume.” A squareness that, she argues, “circumscribes all Black males who aren’t thugging and or/pimping.” Monch has likely been taking notes from Common—and both no doubt remember the challenges Big Daddy Kane faced nearly 20-years ago trying to channel his inner Al Green in a world for which most would have preferred Malcolm X. And it’s not that we haven’t desired our AfroBoHo icons (damn near all nerds in reality) in sexual terms—I’m thinking of the Stephen Shames photo of a bare-chested Huey Newton holding a copy of a Bob Dylan album (which incidentally graces the cover of Robert Reid-Pharr’s new book Once You Go Black) and have you seen Zadie Smith lately for that matter—but we are disturbed when our heroes speak back to our desires. We forget, perhaps, that our heroes often desire the very freedom(s) that we have emboldened them to purchase on our behalf—freedom(s) amorphous, personal and yes, carnal.

Desires for freedom or better yet freedom’s desire is palpable throughout Pharoahe Monch’s new recording. Desire opens with a rendition of the Negro spiritual “Oh Freedom” which segues into the Monch original “Free.” In the hands of another artist this might be an all-too-obvious nod to yet another drama about a rank-and-file rapper locked into a label deal that they didn’t like; Of course it’s about the paper—like our icons shouldn’t want to be fairly compensated for their talents (“Your A&Rs the house, the label’s the plantation/Now switch that advance for your emancipation/MCs in the field, like pick cotton for real”)—but, Monch offers a more generous view.

"Oh Freedom” is a obvious reference to Black America’s “greatest generation”—Nina Simone could have been shot for writing and singing “Mississippi Goddamn”—while the lyrics to “Free” are legitimately obsessed with clarifying the means of production of the very thing Monch desires your consumption of. But when Monch employs some of the on-the-ground rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement in “Free’s” chorus (“you can spit in my face/hold me down/I’ll keep my feet firm to the ground/Because I’m free”) the point is powerfully made that freedom has always been a thing of perspective; I believe I be, therefore I be.

Read Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Cobb, Cannick and Neal on Obama, Hillary, Vick, Kelly and Troop Surges

Bloggers' Roundtable

News & Notes, August 1, 2007 · Today's topics include the potential of a Clinton-Obama presidential ticket, progress in the Iraq war, and the controversies surrounding football star Michael Vick and R&B singer R. Kelly.

Bloggers include Jasmyne Cannick, Michael David Cobb Bowen, and Mark Anthony Neal