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jalylah tells female rap critics to grow a pair · by Rafi Kam
The best response to this week’s Washington Post piece where a mother laments how she cannot let her child listen to rap music comes from Jalylah Burrell who confesses to not reading beyond the piece’s trite setup.
It’s short so I’m going to quote the whole thing.
There, there…Moya e-mailed me this article, which I saw a few days later on MAN’s blog and I have not not made it more than a few lines into the first paragraph for two reasons. I’m disinterested in “when did you fall out of love with hip hop narratives” and I’m disturbed by how consistently readings of women’s behavior are understood through love-romantic, maternal or familial. How many times will we read an article about a woman’s change in musical taste through the metaphor of a deteriorating love affair? First encountered (by me*) in Joan Morgan’s writing it was original if troubling but now it’s just cliché. Maybe there is something good in this piece. I don’t know and I don’t care to find out unless pieces like this are framed in some more original thinking. And I suspect one of the many reasons folk invoke this tired metaphor is out of some insidious essentialist thinking about women and love, which certainly extends beyond the hip hop landscape. One thing I was trying to get at in my preliminary research on Rock “groupies” a few years back is that its not about the love or lust or earnestness (think Crowe’s “Band Aids”) or depravity or debauchery or drugs or even low self-esteem (maybe its a little of those things) but power and agency and access and strategy. There is an undeniable logic to the “groupie’s” behavior. The “groupie” swoon is a complicated movement. I think we are too simplistic when we think about women’s behavior, especially female fans, in conversations about music. And I think these simple formulations have become institutionalized. I am into metaphysics and spirit and all that warm “we are the world” shit but I hate sentimentality. That’s why Brown Sugar was so annoying. Don’t get me wrong it was a warm movie (literally the lighting/the celluloid palette) but dangerously mushy (to its defense it was romantic comedy and they are definitionally mushy). “When did you fall in love with hip hop?” Eck. Of course this question frames all of the female journalist’s (Sanaa Lathan) interviews? Let’s talk more about informed decisions not just conjured feeling.
All that said I’m not against love. But it shouldn’t omnisciently narrate women’s behavior.
Would it be ironic if I said I’m falling hopelessly in love with Jalylah for writing stuff like this?
Word to my Earth Girls Are Easy bookmark.
Comments for "jalylah tells female rap critics to grow a pair"
One of probably many reasons you could cite for falling in love with her. She’s a woman of impeccable taste and intellect ;)
— ian Oct 20, 08:58 PM
“My daughter can’t know that hip-hop and I have loved harder and fallen out further than I have with any man I’ve ever known.
That my decision to end our love affair had come only after years of disappointment and punishing abuse. After I could no longer nod my head to the misogyny or keep time to the vapid materialism of another rap song. After I could no longer sacrifice my self-esteem or that of my two daughters on an altar of dope beats and tight rhymes.”
vomits
— Robbie Oct 20, 10:41 PM
Great piece. I think that whole narrative is beyond tired. It’s certainly common among the Essence school of female rap commentators, but males are just as responsible. I think “I Used To Love H.E.R.” is one of the most overrated songs in rap history; it’s certainly Common’s most overrated song.
— eauhellzgnaw Oct 23, 12:41 PM
She’s probably referring to Davey D’s blog on MySpace; that’s where I first picked up the article as well.
— DJ Flash Oct 24, 04:01 PM
Brown Sugar was corny.
— P-Matik Oct 24, 05:46 PM