Parkside Q

I Freaking LOVE This Song And Vid!

Remember that face. Her name is Janelle Monaé, and she is hot fiyah! Sad as it is to say, she's been around for a while (since 2006 if I recall correctly), but I just heard a song of hers (titled "Many Moons") last weekend. Let me just say this: I've been listening to it on repeat since I first heard it (hat tip to Toni for putting me on!). It's like Afro-punk futuristic electropera trippy what the eff; think Andre 3000 and Fall Out Boy shrooming balls.

The song's so good; I practically wore out a set of headphones replaying her EP, entitled "Metropolis: The Chase Suite". The album's sofa king good, I bought it. With money. No BitTorrenting this one folks, Monaé deserves your cold hard cash. Don't take my word for it though, check out the vid for "Many Moons" below:



Now, some artists make music videos; others make short films and/or productions using their music as the soundtrack. "Thriller" immediately comes to mind as an example of the latter; in a sense, so does "Smack My Bitch Up". "Many Moons" is a video that transcends the usual gimmick of marketing the audio with moving pictures, and actually creates a vivid and surreal visual fabric stitched together by the music itself. It's quite arguable that the vid is better than the song. Props to Monaé for sticking to her off-kilter style - which, in a music industry saturated with the type of catchy, sugarcoated, yet fleetingly empty-calorie instapop aural sex that we've come to call "top 40 hits", is no small feat.

Look out for young Janelle; she's about to take over in a big effing way. One caveat: she is signed to Bad Boy. Here's to hoping Diddy treats her more like Biggie and less like Da Band. Hell, I'll even take Danity Kane-style artist development at this point...

Congrats, Obama!!!

Big shout to Barack Obama, a.k.a. the first Black dude to achieve US Presidential candidacy (and I endorsed you way back when, you best remember me Barry O)!!!

I know this post is kinda late to the nomination victory party, but better late than never, I always say. But it doesn't end here; looking forward, we now have to embrace our candidate as the best choice to lead America (nay, the world) to better times. This should be obvious to anyone that has seen/heard the policies and ideas of his opposition, Gramps McCain.

But I digress; this post is in support of my candidate, our presidential hopeful, champion of audacious hope.  Congratulations, you  this and so much more (coughPRESIDENCY!!cough), and not just for yourself. Your ambition and forward-thinking movement will be a living testament to what America is really about, and what Americans really believe. Mr. Obama, I can hardly wait for the day I can refer to you as "Mr. President".

The Game Of The Name

I read a post on Jezebel today which referenced a fascinating blog post at Daisy's Dead Air. In the article, "Daisy" (her pseudonym) recalls instances over the course of her life where people have discriminated, belittled, and straight up hated on her solely on the basis that her first name sounds "Black". Now, we all know that America's so racially sensitive/intolerant that the NYPD was just acquitted of criminally shooting an unarmed Black man... again. Sadly, this institutionalized, ideological idiocy identified as race is so ingrained and internalized that people will make character judgments/assassinations off something as trivial and arbitrary as a given name (I use that term on purpose to highlight the fact that 99.99% of us don't choose the name that's given to us by our parents).

Daisy's story is a textbook example of this travesty. While she has never had to brush up on her bullet dodging skills, she has faced bigotry that can just as easily tear a person apart. Daisy has experienced everything from having to amend her name on resumes to secure job interviews, to being told that her name is "a nigger name". Here's the kicker in this whole story: Daisy is a blond haired, blue-eyed, Midwestern white woman.

But you wouldn't know it from her real name, which is apparently so Black (whatever the fuck that means) that people questioned whether or not she graduated high school. I wish I was joking. Next time someone tells you racism is dead, ask them (especially if they're white) if they'd ever name their daughter RaShondra, as well as why or why not. The only good excuse not to do so is if you hate seeing red spell-check squiggles underneath proper nouns.

I mean, I know back in the day names had meanings and shit, but those days are over. Example: I know several Black and Latina women with names like Natalia and Natasha; those names are of Russian origin. Similarly, Sasha has historically been a dude's name, but recently I've seen more women than men with it. If names are so dynamic, why are we using them as ways to further divide society in the name (pun intended) of finding "desirable" people, both in terms of looks and skill set?

Let Your Love Just Shower Me. In Semen.

The above is the SWV video for their classic song of seduction, "Rain". Everything from the art direction to the backing beat to the vocality just screams mid-1990's R&B slow jam. I think everyone in my 5th grade class (damn I'm showing my age, or lack thereof) knew the lyrics to this song front and backwards. Which is why I was surprised when I heard it on the way back from upstate NY this weekend and I realized: goddam this song is talking about some freaky shit!

The message went way over my 11-year-old head; I just thought it sounded good at the time. But now that I've had as many years to re-analyze "Rain", I keep coming to the same single epiphany: Coko, Taj, and Lelee were totes into bukkake.

For those that aren't into freaky deaky kinky shit, stop reading now. Unless you would like to know that bukkake refers to the act of ejaculating on a willing participant, by either one or several ejaculator(s). I'm not going to guess whether or not they wanted either singular or multiple dudes raining on their parade; that's not really important. The main point here is that the song is so obviously about having dudes play "weatherman" with their dicks that I can't believe I didn't pick up on this sooner. Well played SWV, well played.

Side note: why does it seem like every successful female R&B group in the 90's have a name consisting of a 3-digit alphanumeric acronym (3LW, SWV, TLC, 702, etc.)? Sheesh, En Vogue is like the only group that comes to mind that bucked this trend. But I digress; peep the detailed lyrical breakdown after the jump. Lyrics are in black, commentary in clockwork orange.

DMX: Ignant Or Ironic?

I've been meaning to make a post about this for a while, but there's been so much other randomness happening in my life this past week that I didn't get a chance to sit and think about this until now. Anyways, last week XXL magazine posted an interview they did with rapper DMX. Boy, was this one a doozy.

It started off rather typically; DMX was asked about his upcoming projects, what artists he's been listening to recently, yada yada yada. But soon after the usual niceties, the interview took a trip to Bizarro World. When asked how he'd been using his time between studio albums, DMX started rambling about the police "raiding [his] house"  and confiscating his weapons. He seemed to be confused by later questions; there were several times where he kept repeating answers from previous questions when the interviewer was asking about different topics.

The major bombshell of this interview, however, came when the Dark Man was asked about the current Presidential race. At first, DMX expressed ambivalence to the current political developments (he claimed to not be following the race "at all"), but then he displayed shock and disgust upon hearing that Barack Obama was a candidate. His exact quotes from the interview are:

"What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama....Get the fuck outta here."

DMX then went on to rant about how he didn't participate in the political system, since he felt that it makes no difference who runs the country. He spewed some random conspiracy theories about puppet governments, and how they want to set up a Black man to take the fall for America's current political problems. While we all are entitled to our opinions, something about his tirade just seemed off to me.

It's All About The O (No, Not "Orgasms")

As an educated Black person, I like Barack Obama. To me and many other people, he exemplifies all that is good in America, especially Black America. I am not naive enough, however, to believe that Obama's campaign for the 2008 US Presidency has been all peaches and cream, despite his hype being greater than Jordan's first comeback.

His major recent setback stemmed from some controversial comments his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, made that leaked through the press and was  circulated widely on the Internet. This type of incident, while not as titillating as other recent political scandals, had the potential to unravel months of strategy and campaigning efforts by Team Barack. Some people (highly unwarranted, I might add) damn near went Queen of Hearts a la "Alice" on his ass.

So how did Big O handle this potential hot mess? Well, he took his lemons, cut them up, and used them as garnish on a refreshingly crisp Long Island Iced Tea. Instead of imploding like lesser presidential hopefuls could (and would) have, he stepped up to the plate and took the time to address the nation's concerns head on (you know, kind of like a good President would do). He tackled such a sensitive issue as race with the precision and care of an eye doctor performing Lasic, packaged in the honesty we Americans deserve.

In Case You Thought Black History Ended On Feb. 29

The above document is over 175 years old, and is a testament to the atrocity that we as Black people have faced in these United States. While we are no longer bought and sold like cattle, we are still held in the bondage of discrimination that sometimes can stifle the spirit of a human soul.

Normally I don't like blogging about depressing things like slavery and the dark history of emancipation, but if we forget history, we will be doomed to repeat it. So I am posting this image as a reminder of where we've come, so that we don't lose sight of where we have to go.