Basement Jack Swing b/w Tenderoni

Homeboy P-Disco and I are obsessed with New Jack Swing and will, in fact, start DJing it the second we can find Toni Tony Tone vinyl. As such, the best $8.50 I spent yesterday was not for tickets to the Blazers-Spurs game (where shots materialized and then vaporized and, despite a couple good [pointless] plays, the Blazers didn’t seem to notice another team was even on the court).
The best $8.50 I spent yesterday went towards Bell Biv Devoe’s greatest hits record, used. “Gangsta” sounds like the second half of Kish Kash and maybe B-Jaxx is New Jack Swing, is all. Lisa Kekula reimagined as a Fly Girl-era Rosie Perez, all pomp and circumstance and uncircumscribable power.
Spent all day at the library, inhaling the dust of knowledge, reading back issues of Sojourner magazine and wondering how some of the same arguments in feminism keep repeating themselves, politics vs. mechanics of sex and sex work in particular–1970s Audre Lorde, 1980s Andrea Dworkin vs. Karen Lindsey, Camille “I don’t even know if she’s at all considered because I am not in college nor was I ever, really” Paglia, Bust Magazine. Ideas that reconsider sexual freedom, and see female appropriation of aggressive male sex power characteristics as self-degrading and anti-humanist. And, a thought from the early 20th Century, from Suzanne LaFollette:
“Nothing could be more grotesquely unjust than a code of morals, reinforced by laws, which relieves men from responsibility for irregular sex acts, and for the same acts drives women to abortion, infanticide, prostitution, and self-destruction.”
Nearly 100 years later, Sabrina Sojourner:
“I want a female centered and defined sexuality that recognizes the power of surrender and capture.”
And, this year, Lil’ Kim lyrics (from “Cant Hold Us Down” w/Christina Aguilera):
“Check it–Here’s something I just can’t understand
If the guy have three girls then he’s the man
He can either give her some head, or sex her raw
If the girl do the same, then she’s a whore
But the table’s about to turn
I’ll bet my fame on it
Cats take my ideas and put their name on it
It’s alright though, you can’t hold me down
I got to keep on movin’
To all my girls with a man who be tryin to mack
Do it right back to him and let that be that
You need to let him know that his game is wack
And Lil’ Kim and Christina Aguilera got your back.”
What conditions make it necessary for Kim and Christina–two women who’ve been vilified for their sexually aggressive appearances/lyrics, who may or may not practice a complicit self-objectification–to indict the double standard, addressing issues that were not only integral to the feminist movement of the ’70s, but were integral to the feminist thought of the Suffragettes? A hundred years have passed. We still don’t have the answers. Or maybe we have the answers, but mass practical application is kind of a snag.
This is what I am researching at the library. Exploring like I’m and the Temple of Doom.
My favorite library employee, David Chandler, caught me in the reference section and played devil’s advocate, questioned Christina and Kim’s debt to the record industry, and whether they were just “jumping on the bandwagon.” I considered it. But what bandwagon? The massive bandwagon of explicitly feminist song lyrics that’s sweeping Clear Channel? Oh yeah. If that’s what they were doing, jumping on a bandwagon of it being cool and accepted and economically rewarded/beneficial to be a vocal, unfaltering feminist in the context of Today’s Popular Music, I would tattoo the letters S-T-O-K-E-D across my belly in the queen’s cursive, or at least Olde English. Where is the magical bandwagon–the Liz Phair bandwagon? The Brody Dalle one? Missy? Anyone who wants to enlighten me gets a special handmade, non-denominational, non-gender-specific winter holiday card.
Then David Chandler, my favorite library employee, playing devil’s advocate after fixing the printer of the lady librarian who showed me where to look, shared with me this rad link. This link is where we will download every deep house track in the whole wide world. All things considered, even shoveling my way through piles of conundrum, I feel very fortunate for the privilege.