i'm so not as forgiving as melange lavonne on this point. bigup to her, btw, for being on the homo hip hop headlining tour later this summer...props.
anyways, a host of personal/professional issues have brought me to pondering on this here point, and my living example (which is a happy one in the end) is none other than mz. erykah badu.
i never understood the people who ride jill scott's jock so hard, because dope as she is, all her shit sounds the same. look at mz wright's ability to come with a brand new du every single time out, not only just unique from everyone else in the game, but also different from everything else she's done. and there' s never any question that she's gonna sell out or that there are more than 36 chambers to the gun she wields as a bag lady with pride.
if you look at her career in relation to the men in her life, it's something else. the magic on her live album, which just cemented the first release forever in the cannon of soul music, in anticipation of the birth of seven, we can see that things are starting to turn to the "next lifetime" vibe with her baby daddy, but at the time of "mama's gun" and "stankonia", they were easily the two most equally amazing and opposite releases of the year.
then comes "water for chocolate", which is mr. lynn's most soulful release, and something tells me that he will never get that back, because "electric circus" is a man grasping for straws. "be" and "the love below" were both breakthrough to the mainstream underground for both those men, but they were missing that extra je ne sais quoi, that touch of being around a strong and creative woman. don't knock the inspiration, the essence of a her prescence.
in both of their faces, homegirl flipped it again on everyone with "worldwide underground", and the track that simultaneously rocked the block party and called back the nostalgia of being the object of her affection, "back in the day (puff)". the pulsing and the mumbling and the intricacies of sound on that joint are the stuff that evolutions are made of. and remixing "love of my life", 'cuz you know it was never about hip hop, with bahamadia, queen la and angie stone, ya. your girlfriends are forever, and never have to be reminded that you are the queen, fuck a princess and a schedule.
so, this is a shoutout to influence, lurking and adding your touch to something in an intangible yet inextricable way. don't sleep just because you can't be credited (or won't be) because somebody is bound to notice. that's my hero(in)-ya, pun intended, bitches, of the week. that and sean lala's mix...still. that's how i roll, 100% or nothing. if you wanna pick from my apple tree, cool, if not, i'm ghost. and writing. "i work at pleasing me 'cuz i can't please you, and that's why, i do what i do."
