May 2006 Archives

Farai Chideya's Roundtable with Duke professor Mark Anthony Neal, Karrine Steffans (Confessions of a Video Vixem) and MTV's Shaheem Reid, on negative images of women in hip-hop IRT Duke Rape case. I've heard a lot of convos/roundtables on this topic and this is probably the most incisive and relevant thus far.

You might not've been able to tell it here, but "Tick Tock" was my jam for all of second-half '04. Perhaps the last classic Prodigy verse, wherein Our Top Dun turns to the streets of his memory and spits how he spits best - "i was like, 12. they was like, blood, listen. keep your mouth closed and yr eyes and yr ears wide open. gangsta. i soaked it all in. my first hammer was a one-shot deuce-deuce. had my pockets full of bullets i was real loose." -- telling stories, how Prodigy got where he got, one of his most evocative moments - "little badasses. my nigga rap sat my down like this: he said, 'p, you gon' wind up dead. you an hav' real good with that music shit. you need to stick to it, dun, get your mind off the street.'"
and a fine Nas verse, a bloody moment painted, and a melancholy, sweaty Nas-sung chorus, a Queensbidge summer in the '90s, prolly, unpredictable and thick. Alchemist on the beat - deep groove bass sample, thrown back to '70s soul.

And it's just like, I hear "It's Alright" on Blood Money, same beat different verses, Mary singing in complete sentences over five tracks of herself, the oral history of "Tick Tock" replaced by 50's template for babes-n-verse. Prodigy now rapping rather disjointedly about a lady, minks, a whip, sugar daddyism, etc. Mary wants us to believe she's going to put away her fears and learn to trust via Mobb Deep, like she forgot that one rap about a lady's stomach as cum bucket. 50 brands the intro with as much rote CEO formality as Puff Daddy in the Puff Daddy days--say my name, say my name, like it's not so canny that the track after that one borrows the same sample as "Hypnotize" (Herb Alpert's "Rise")-- and I'm like, whatever, P and Hav, I'm out like Greg Tate.

Half & Half is the best tiny comfort food diner in PDX, and Robin Rosenberg runs it. She has recently started blogging about it on Urban Honking. Please read the linked entry regarding quips traded with a customer named Dennis. Her anecdotes are as good as her granola.

Gosh, Robin, you make awesome granola.

When I lived in Portland, and every fifth band dude approached me on the street to inform me that I knew less about music than he did, or that my writing, opinions, and/or lifestyle choices "sucked shit," I always wagered that if I was a man, no one would ever try to run up on me like that. Moreso when the complaints were gendered, as they often were. I also pretended that it never bothered me, an emotional constitution of steel, which eventually led a coked-up former coworker to accuse me of being an egomaniac. Narcissistic, perhaps, but never an egomaniac. It always, always bothered me. Anyway, apparently putting on the poker face is a common defense:

from women's enews:

COMMENTARY

Female Pundits Could Use Help With Hate Mail

By Heidi Schnakenberg
WeNews commentator

(WOMENSENEWS)--As a young woman, I stepped out into the treacherous waters of opinion journalism, and was amazed by the lack of civil discourse and the intensity of personal attacks that I received via e-mail, letters to the editor and on Web postings.

Subjects such as women's issues, racism, anti-war politics, environmental matters and virtually any topic deemed "liberal" inspired some vitriolic comments from readers that I will mention here.

I was called everything from "bitch" to "whore" and was often addressed as "sweetie" or "honey" before a launch of expletives. Most attackers took the position that I was just a cute, dumb college student (even though I was in my late 20s) in an effort to discredit me and I was most reliably attacked by a collection of right-wing Web sites and right-wing men who sent me letters.

Needless to say, I ran out of the gates, trail-blazing, and came back a wounded animal.

The experience solidified my "attack and retreat" explanation of the low numbers of women in opinion journalism.

The presence of female opinion journalists has remained virtually unchanged over the past 25 years, with only 10 percent to 20 percent of all op-eds in the country being written by women. Only about a quarter of nationally syndicated columnists are women and they tend to be white and right-wing.

While numerous professions--science, medicine and even journalism--have seen a sharp rise in female participants, opinion journalism doesn't seem to budge.

In my case, I was attacked, and then retreated into self-censorship for a period of months and in that darkened room I found no mentors and little support from editors.
Fear of Appearing Vulnerable

The psychic impact of hate mail is something female writers don't often talk about in fear of appearing vulnerable in the male world of opinion writing. I believe women can take the heat of opinion journalism as well as any man; the problem is that the heat we take and the reasons why are very different.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times discussed reactions to female opinion in her column last year. "While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating." She went on to say she called Alan Dundes, a renowned folklorist, to ask about it. "Women are supposed to take it, not dish it out," Dundes told her.

Rekha Basu is the civil liberties voice at the Des Moines Register in Iowa, and she is a woman, liberal and Indian. She's been called a Hindu-worshipping slut, an Arab terrorist, a whore, a lesbian, a cunt, a skanky Muslim. Most insults are via e-mail and on Web sites, where attackers can remain relatively anonymous.

She's been stalked and followed on the highway and told readers can't wait to read her obituary in the newspaper. But nothing hurt like the time a reader said they hoped her husband, who has Lou Gehrig's disease, would hurry up and die so she would leave the country.

Rekha used to be scared, and is still hurt by some of the more malicious letters. But after a while she realized "I have the opportunity to change lives. If I censor myself, what's the point?"
Do Men Get the Same?

Do men get the same? I asked David Yepsen, who is white, male, centrist and also a columnist at the Register. He says he is called an asshole from time to time and received a death threat once, but Yepsen felt readers had paid their quarter and were entitled to an opinion. "I've heard Rekha was called a Hindu-worshipping slut and things like that. I've never gotten anything on par with that," he said.

Katherine Kersten is a conservative voice at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and gets a lot of grief from the liberal population. But it doesn't seem the same over-the-top, bone-chilling stuff that Rekha receives. Kersten said some readers harassed her for going against women's interests and she was accused of being dishonest and greedy. However, Kersten felt men and women received equal treatment from readers, noting that Nick Coleman (a liberal voice at the Star Tribune), gets as many attacks, if not more than she does.

Coleman thinks there is a gender gap in the hate mail. "My wife is also a columnist at the St. Paul Pioneer, and there is a huge difference between the types of abuse I get, and what she gets. It's much worse for her," he said.

Michele Weldon, a contributor to Women's eNews who has also provided columns to the Chicago Tribune, recalled the time a hostile reader of a column read her memoir on the domestic abuse she experienced and wrote to tell her she deserved everything she got.

Sasha Kemmet is a young, budding liberal writer for The Des Moines Register's Young Adult Board. She has been stalked by critics who have accused her of everything from racism to elitism. She describes her detractors as deeply misogynist.

"I was surprised by the viciousness of the attacks and it was extremely disappointing. My goal in writing was to initiate dialogue, not bring about petty personal attacks." Kemmet thinks "society wants women to have opinions as long as they don't speak them too loudly . . . as long as this persists, women will believe it themselves."
Year-Old Debate

A year ago, the debate about female pundits was blazing.

In February of 2005, Susan Estrich ignited it by launching an e-mail campaign that blasted the Los Angeles Times for hiring few women to write columns.

A discussion of the situation then bounced around from Estrich to Maureen Dowd to Katha Pollitt of The Nation and included scores of columnists across the country.

I was emboldened by what Pollitt had to say on the topic last December. "Women buy the crap about women being too shy-weak-polite to express themselves," she wrote. She added that this is "not the fault of women themselves . . . women are discriminated against, not groomed or mentored."

In Dowd's column on the topic, she said that after six months writing op-eds, she retreated into submission and nearly walked away from the job, just "wanting to be liked."

Young women, like Kemmet and me, tend to go into this profession with a lot of hope and passion. But we sometimes retreat without an adequate support network.

When new female writers are bolstered by the moral support needed to survive the onslaught of anti-female sentiment flooding their inboxes, more women's by-lines will show up on the opinion pages.

Heidi Schnakenberg is a part-time columnist for the Des Moines Register, and her work has appeared in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, The Ghanaian Times, the Algona Upper Des Moines and the San Diego Union-Tribune. Heidi is also a published screenwriter for American Zoetrope.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.

For more information:

Female Op-Ed Journalists Should Ignite Fireball:
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2229/

The Nation--
Invisible Women:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050404/pollitt

The Washington Post--
Writing Women Into a Corner:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38563-2005Mar15.html

oh my goodness i forgot to tell ya, URGE has launched and we've been raging ever since. I just posted a thousand words on my R&B blog about New Edition Day (May 19, 2006, ATL GA) and underrated New Edition-related tunes, most of them from Bell Biv Devoe's Hootie Mack. "Above the Rim" is such a great song. (PS: the HEAT CAN SPARK IT UP BUT SHEED'll PUT YOU OUTTTT)

also matt sonzala is blogging about dallas on the hip-hop blog, and jon caramanica is writing about country and wondering, "can reba eat?" oh pithy jon, and jessica is writing about her "kelis' 'bossy' video"-style night with some scissors and hair to the tune of unrest's imperial ffrr. we love music, it's true.

Cuz we started watching season three (thank you bittorrent, thank you Nicety Nels), I've been doing a little more RE-SEARCH, and discovered Michael K. Williams is a man of my own heart:

"I was very content with dancing. My dream was just to become a Janet Jackson background dancer so I could work with Janet."

also: CHOREOGRAPHED CRYSTAL WATERS' "100% PURE LOVE"

STARRED IN MADONNA'S SECRET VIDEO
(his abs figure prominently starting at 2:09)

Man... I wanna give this dude a hug now.
I really dug "BLack Betty" and a whole buncha other tracks, too.
You are impeccable musicians.
I am sorry Dave Chappelle is crazy.

[thanks to Alex Pappademas for the link]

My sentiments exactly. It was also fun sending taunting texts to said eye-rolling rap crits across the way, i.e.:

"WHAT, YOU DON'T LOVE HIP-HOP?"

and/or

"WARM IT UP! MAKE IT HAPPEN!"
during that 25 minute guitar solo.

JAMMING! or as nick said at one point during the night, "HACKEYSACK!"

If I had been thinking, I would have asked P-Murder to play my birthday. Fortunately, they are playing Twee Zone on the 20th, which is where I'll be with my crew after the morning jog, the DJ-related beer garden in Queens and the matinee of the Da Vinci Code (saturdays rule). Absurdity is the name of my game. Love P-Murder & minimal-gritty cowbell rhythms RIYL call and response, g0-go, inexcessive deployment of melodica, rap minutiae, smart people: p-murder's the mountain

INNYFUCKINWAY, word to cam'ron giles... we finally met the other day and we are indeed the antitheses of each other... it was a disaster but also satisfying... and now that i know he's got a song devoted to his struggle w/"IBS" on killa season, i know we are soul mates in the most deeply polar fashion. ("bad twins," if you will, and YES that is a "lost" reference. What up Alvar Hanso.)

seriously, IBS will make you salty. and nihilism never comes from nowhere.

cam's IBS excerpt:
"you know my attitude/ arrogant, cocky, rude
eatin off my papi food
used to be a stocky dude.'

it was no fun to work
everyday my stomach hurt
rippin off my undershirts
the pain was no comparison

throwin up in public
yo fuck it, it was embarrassin...

i can't enjoy a movie dinner
my son growin up, i'm lookin like the movie thinner
i'm thinkin suicide / do or die / sit and cry"

i feel you, my dude. Seriously... IBS is totally misunderstood and under-researched, and when cam comes with these left-field, awareness-raising PSAs i want to give him a hug.

fuck jadakiss for being on paris hilton's album.
actually, fuck the senate instead or more.

Today is the second day I have been 30. I canceled work and therapy and wandered around outside alone, which is the activity I have spent the most total time doing since I moved to New York.
Water's great gift is weightlessness. Age's great trick is that the longer you go, the more lonely you'll be, which is fucked if you started where some people do. Even if the calls come: the problem with a heart like a sieve. I went swimming for its negating qualities.

One nice thing about my birthday is that no matter how old I get, damita jo will always be exactly ten years older than me.

thank you nick for reminding me that a slide whistle by any other name is still a slide whistle

Transcript
President Bush's Statement

The following is the transcript of President Bush's statement regarding domestic spying, as provided by Federal News Service.

After September the 11th, I vowed to the American people that our government would do everything within the law to protect them against another terrorist attack. As part of this effort, I authorized the National Security Agency to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. In other words, if al Qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States, we want to know what they're saying.

Today there are new claims about other ways we are tracking down al Qaeda to prevent attacks on America. I want to make some important points about what the government is doing and what the government is not doing.

First, our intelligence activities strictly target al Qaeda and their known affiliates. Al Qaeda is our enemy and we want to know their plans.

Second, the government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval.

Third, the intelligence activities I authorized are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat.

Fourth, the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities. We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates.

So far, we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil. As a general matter, every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy. Our most important job is to protect the American people from another attack, and we will do so within the laws of our country.

Thank you.

Q Sir, how is collecting phone calls not an intrusion on privacy?

(No response from the president.)

.... END

RIP Soraya, Colombian-American singer and breast cancer awareness advocate.

This week, she posted a goodbye letter to fans on her Web site. "I know there are many questions without answers, and that hope doesn't leave with me, and above all, that my mission does not end with my physical story," she wrote.

you know when you have a really angry, aggressive but edifying conversation with a good friend about the sadistic negliglence/ treachery of the administration and the pervasive what*the*fuckitude of our country? the new mr. lif album 'mo mega' is like that. he is just wildng out and i am affirmed by his fury, it makes me feel not-alone and his is totally motivating. at its best:

"Fact 3: the Bush Administration's worth nothin: "just fuck 'em/throw 'em in a barrel, buck 'em'
Oh, you ain't know those flood waters is comin? You can't smell that African blood runnin?
Or that y'all niggaz is [unintelligible] or suh'in
fuck Clinton too
you ain't really down cuz you live uptown, bitch: Rwanda."

a screed of palpable noise and post-katrina doom--a monotonous cyclone of rage and sorrow--and el-p's backcatalogue of '70s sci fi samples, which i believe he just conjures inside the reaches of his brain.

fuck yeah. i yearn for good political music because i want to feel like i'm not on an island, same as i want good love songs and good party songs and good pain songs, good meaning "emphatic." with feeling, accurate and honest and verbose or as precise as possible. Anyway I did not really like that Perceptionists album beyond the idea of it, but this Lif album makes me want to hi five him and then activate.
Also, he has some pretty explicit sex songs--phonesex and groupies--it's like the dead prez vein of diversification i think, which didn't workfor the prez so much but i wil tell you this: el-p doing a dancehall riddim is actually a way fucking better idea than it might sound. it's like he sampled the sound fx from some detective movie or old hitchcock film and yeah, blade-runner dancehall is exactly what i wanna be listening to in 2079.

According to the Times,

General Hayden made brief remarks, saying, "There's probably no post more important in preserving our security and our values as a people than the head of the Central Intelligence Agency." In a comment directed specifically to agency employees, he said, "Your achievements are frequently underappreciated and hidden from the public eye, but you know what you do to protect the republic."

Moreover,
He previously served as director of the National Security Agency (NSA), having assumed that position in 1999. During his tenure as director, the longest in the history of the agency, he oversaw the controversial warrantless wiretapping program.

The central question is, I guess, how to exist, however we choose to define that word, with whatever power we opt to give it, or at least to the farthest reaches of our understanding of the concept, of what it means to live. And how to exist when you feel turned inside out, as though you are occupying negative space, I guess, is a dilemma indeed, except when you first learned that you could exist by becoming someone else, a person inside whatever book you're reading, say, and in that case, you find a way to both escape your existence, or non-existence as the case may be, and actualize yourself into a manner of being, even if said manner of being lives entirely in the imaginary space of a relationship: the relationship between your thoughts, which one cannot touch, and the pages of a book, which are devastatingly corporeal. Sub-question, but one that determines the outcome: which is more dangerous; the ephemeral, inside, or the concrete, exposed? Which has a mightier sting? This is arbitrary and decided behind closed doors.

Put it another way. You occupy negative space. In order to escape this predicament you must negate the space around you to become a positive; this is something like a resurrection, except you weren't dead before, you were simply not-living. You achieve this "becoming" by climbing into the crevices of the words and living inside the book, a manner of consecration by your understanding, insofar that consecration, as defined by the Catholic Dictionary, "is an act by which a thing is separated from a common and profane to a sacred use, or by which a person or thing is dedicated to the service and worship of God by prayers, rites, and ceremonies"--that is, substituting "thing" for "self" and "God" for "god."

"The custom of consecrating persons to the Divine service and things to serve in the worship of God may be traced to the remotest times."

Remote, far away from everything, except for the brain and except for the book, not by the book but actually BORNE OF the book.

It is this in way that you became magical, not a virgin birth because the words are infinite, but a necessary fission. From the negative space, you climb outside yourself into flesh. But you are the first to be birthed both entirely alone and solely by words, a far greater miracle than the father-seahorse who carries the babies or even the fleshless unions of zygotes in glass beakers. You are magical, and exist, only because you have written yourself into it and if the words stop you will cease, not die but cease, which is much, much worse. Don't stop, don't stop, don't don't don't don't stop then, please don't stop the beat. The heart beat. Get a load of the syntax on that baby! Don't don't don't do-do-do-don't stop. It's like a bad day that never ends.

as of june 1, we have a room open in our dormlike, brooklyn 4-br apartment. room is decent sized, beautifully close to atlantic/pacific stop and under $600. three ladies, we are kind of hoping to live with a boy to balance out our intense girlnergy but it is not imperative. we want someone with their own life but who will hang out with us, too. we like: watching the wire, playing loud rap music in our living room and dancing, talking about winston churchill, louise gluck and remy ma, surfing the internet as group activity, re-enacting who's afraid of virginia woolf? repeatedly for 24 hours, sharing the new york times magazine, the trader joe's winestore, and being members of the Crunch. also, michelle listens exclusively to virgin radio. we are like the smartest 15 year olds you know. do you think you can handle our bodacious jam? send your resume and a cover letter to: julianneshepherd@yahoo.com.

also, fyi, i am not really a stoner. I have been herbal maybe twice since july 4, 1996, an unfortunate date in the annals of my history. 420 is, simply, a metaphor for my discontent.

I appreciate the thought, but the preceding post does not mean today is my birthday--it is may 16 and i will be sure to let everyone know when it goes down. I will be hoarding mas ganj and killing mucho bad guys on the '90s sony playstation console Mo brought back from home, that's how you will know I am 30.

Last night was Ebenezer's birthday party, held at Hotel QT, a concept swimming bar in Times Square. The pool is elevated on one side of the bar and there is a little window you can swim up to and order drinks, a swim-up window. They were playing the Slits and ESG over the speakers even tho it is a Moby/Playgroup kind of place, as identified by the STEEL N CONCRETE, lo-rent W decor. I can't imagine who thought it was a good idea to mix midtown after-work drinks and a steam room but we swam despite the potential debauchery, in bathing suits, Alex and Christine and Eben all floating around with wine glasses of margaritas for Cinco de Mayo. Fortuitously, I made a new friend, Caroline, who is a microbiologist. She is my first scientist friend since I left Keith, the Mitochondria Guy, behind in Portland.

Eben's friends from Rio were there, too, and we had long, satisfying conversations about funk carioca, class, and Bonde do Role (and its correctly accented pronunciation: "Bahnda doo hRholay"). They taught me what it means to have a Carousel, what it means to the woman who became pregnant from Carousel participation and unsuccessfully sued the party promoters because she didn't know which dude's the dad, and more importantly the social conditions (and which substances) that lead to making one's involvement in a carousel seem like "a good idea." Drugs and oil run this bluish planet. More after the jog.

Soul Bounce
Southern R&B melds minds with crunk and Dirty South rap
by Julianne Shepherd

Fresh off a photo shoot, the four ladies of Cherish -- Neosha, Farrah, and twins Felisha and Fallon King - are bubbling over. Sisters between the ages of 18 and 22 years old, they are meticulously lip-glossed, wearing matching red ballet flats, and finishing each other's sentences the way only family can. They are excitedly discussing their single, "Do It (To It)," which has become a chart fixture by translating the dances and club hits of their Atlanta hometown to a national audience. "Good Morning America wanted us to teach them how to do the snap dance," giggles Neosha. "It's hilarious."

On "Do It (To It)," Cherish harmonize airily over producer Don Vito's synth bounce, name-checking dances like Poole Palace and club hits like "Kryptonite." The song joins an expanding roster of chart hits that represent ATL culture, including other snap tracks like D4L's "Laffy Taffy," Dem Franchize Boys' "I Think They Like Me," Lil' Jon's "Snap Yo Fingers" and BHI's "Do It Do It." But while the latter joints are 100% rapper-helmed, the ladies of Cherish sing in soprano harmonies and sped-up cadences that mirror the staccato syntax of Dirty South rappers such as Eightball and Ludacris. As Southern hip-hop devours the charts, increasingly, Southern soul is responding to rap's empire by offering its own bounce, further blurring the boundary between rap and R&B. And while Cherish rep the A, the group also reflects the fact that in a post Ciara/Lil' Jon world, the young face of southern rhythm and blues is crunky, hooky, and custom-fitted for the club. "We're so influenced by rap that when we write our music, we're incorporating it," explains Felisha. "Not on purpose, but it's all around us, 24-7. That's why I think female music from Atlanta -- or the South, period -- is different and unique: because we create hip-hop and R&B together."

The sound of hip-hop soul dates back to Mary J. Blige's 1992 breakout single "Real Love." But the Southern strain of putting ooh-bop on the boom-bap is something else entirely. The new Southern soul sound is descendant of disco, electro, and Mariah Carey/Ol'Dirty Bastard's 1996 "Fantasy (Remix)," which popularized the use of guest-rappers on R&B tunes. Says Farrah, "Hip-hop's changing R&B to a mix of the two. It's more about fun. It's more than just singing. The main radio stations in Atlanta don't really play R&B unless it has a rapper on it. I don't have a problem with it, 'cause I love rap." Today's young R&B singers came up in an environment where the Dungeon Family was as important as Donnie Hathaway. As such, they encapsulate and respond to rap cultures of Atlanta, Houston and Miami, where dancing is as hot as the weather and club bangers rule supreme. It's energetic, it's young, it's Crunk & B. Whether repping the dance-floor (as do Cherish) or the donks (the '70s high-rise Chevys featured in the video for Ciara's flagship "Oh"), Crunk & B is the first viable R&B offshoot, that isn't beholden to throwback soul, since producer Teddy Riley's New Jack Swing translated Harlem to the world.

WE GOT THE BEATS

"When Teddy Riley had New Jack Swing, if you didn't have no New Jack Swing on your record in the R&B world, you wasn't getting in. He cornered the market with one sound," opines Jermaine Dupri, the Atlanta super-producer and So So Def head honcho whose beats and vision have greatly contributed to the evolution of Atlanta music of the past two decades. "I'm not trying to do that," continues Dupri, "but that was my inspiration. And you gotta have the bounce. I can't even front and say that you don't."

Beat-makers up and down the Atlantic seaboard purvey the sound of Crunk & B, yet it's almost exclusively the domain of Atlanta's three-headed monster: Dupri, Lil' Jon and Jazze Pha. Their party beats have defined Crunk & B. "With the bounce being so hard in the South, that's all we know," explains Dupri. "It came from us trying to create our own sound, because we were always held as country and not able to compete with the other major cities. When people push you into making your own sound, you create your own momentum. That's basically what happened. We were all the most challenged producers, which forced us to create something almost bulletproof. It made us create our own feel."

This sound has been gestating for at least a decade -- look no further than Ghost Town DJs' 1996 "My Boo," Aaliyah's 1998 "Are You That Somebody?" or Destiny's Child's 1999 "Jumpin Jumpin," for proof. But it began coagulating in 2004, when Lil' Jon coined the term, describing the beats he made for Usher's "Yeah," and Ciara's 2004 debut, Goodies, as "Crunk & B, R&B songs that get you crunk, make you wanna wild out." (Lil' Jon is currently working on his new album and, citing prior studio engagement, declined to be interviewed for this piece.)

For Ciara's debut, Jon and co-producer Jazze Pha mined their stashes of electro cowbells and whistling synths. Their tracks could've easily been created for rappers (Goodies' several hits included verses from Petey Pablo, Missy Elliott and Ludacris), and both producers are used to crafting the low-end for both rap and R&B. Jazze Pha, who is currently co-producing Ciara's second album, making beats for singing/rapping trio Bella and releasing Cherish on his label Sho'Nuff,, says the sound "captures a moment. I got so many different styles in there: that crunk the kids love, with that energy you can't ignore because it's so relevant. But it's also that classic R&B, that dance."

All three producers occupy a place in the lineage from electro to disco to booty bass to Southern rap, but the fact of their shared hip-hop and R&B rosters means they act as conduits between the two styles. Says Jazze Pha, "Whether it's Frankie Beverly or Beyonce or Kelly Rowland, you definitely have to have the times in mind, period. But as far as R&B is concerned, there is a vibe that is timeless. Rap has a timer on it."

RING THE ALARM

If mixtapes are the timepieces of the streets, it follows that R&B artists have been generating heat just as rappers do: by freestyle-singing over popular hip-hop beats and distributing them via mixtapes, or their MySpace pages. Mary J. Blige started the current trend by initially street-releasing "MJB da MVP," which features her vocal track over Dr. Dre's smoldering, horns-and-bass production for The Game's "Hate it or Love it." Atlanta singer Nivea sings above the beat for Dem Franchize Boys' "Think They Like Me" (producer: Dupri).

A few Southern R&B singers have taken the idea a step further by releasing full mixtapes of R&B freestyles and street cuts. LaToya Luckett, the Houstonian who sang in Destiny's Child from 1993-2000, dropped LeToya Luckett: the H-town Chick with DJ Brandi Garcia in early 2006. (It was a preview of her self-titled solo debut, which entered the Billboard Album charts at #1 in August of 2006.) Atlanta's Bella did the same, joining up with Don Cannon, one of the most respected producer/DJs in the rap game, for The Boss Baby Mixtape. Says Bella singer Kayla Shelton, "Cannon helped out, but it was Bella's idea; no other girl groups are doing anything like this. We're not doing snap records, but our music is real ghetto R&B mixed with pop. For such a long time, no one was dancing," she continues. "Everyone was trying to be all grown and sexy, but this brings back fun. And the guys are dancing, too!? It's crazy."

With R&B increasingly tethered to rap culture and vice versa, some view Crunk & B as a byproduct of the dearth of female rappers, or a real space for women in rap music. LeToya, whose self-titled debut includes a chopped-and-screwed track called "Gangsta Grillz," says, "I'm proud to even say I'm a Houstonian because of DJ Screw. No other female artist from Houston has had a screwed and chopped record on their album. I wanted to let people know the boys aren't the only ones that can do it. The ladies can represent as well." Cherish's Fallon echoes this sentiment, almost verbatim. "We want the ladies to understand that you can do the exact same thing the guys do in the club. You do it a little more sophisticated, but you can be just as hard with it."

"...And being that we do R&B," finishes Neosha, "we're competing with rappers for spots in the club. If they have only one slot and ask 'do I play cherish or do I play Yung Joc?' it's Yung Joc. So you definitely need more edge -- but it's all good, we're holding our own!"

Still, while ladies like Cherish, Bella and Letoya might see Crunk & B as a reaction to the male dominance of the rap game, Dupri sees it as a reaction to the cult of the gangster. "In the business world, everybody wanna be so hard," he explains. "We are all intrigued by [it]. There wouldn't be a Scarface movie, the Godfather, or Goodfellas if the world wasn't intrigued by gangsterism. But at the same time, everybody ain't on it like that, and at some point you have to stop acting like it. At one point, every record I heard, someone was killing somebody or dying in the record. 'I'll shoot you a hundred times with fifty guns.' Okay, cool, but I'm not living like that, so I need to hear something that caters to what I'm doing. You got so many people out here that don't wear bandannas frontin' like they do. This R&B stuff coming back to life is definitely gonna break the monotony."

c. 2006 Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

I could only fit 25 on the Urge jam: a longer, more extensive playlist (not omitting J-Shin and T-Pain) to follow.

1. Mary J. Blige: Real Love
2. Ghost Town DJs: My Boo
3. Aaliyah f. Timbaland: Are You That Somebody?
4. Destiny's Child: Jumpin', Jumpin'
5. Ciara f. Ludacris: Oh
6. Nivea: Parking Lot (Alternate Lyrics)
7. Brooke Valentine f. Pimp C: Dope Girl (Edited Album Version)
8. LeToya f. Bun B & Jazze Pha: Tear Da Club Up (H-town Version)
9. Usher f. Ludacris & Lil Jon: Yeah!
10. Beyonce f. Slim Thug: Check On It
11. Nivea f. Lil Jon: Okay
12. Mariah Carey f. Young Jeezy, Jay-Z: Shake It Off (prod. Jermaine Dupri)
13. Usher: Confessions (Part II)
14. Teedra Moses: You Better Tell Her
15. LeToya f. Jermaine Dupri: Torn (So So Def Remix)
16. Jagged Edge f. Jermaine Dupri: Stunnas
17. Bella f. Jody Breeze: Caught Up
18. One Chance: Look At Her
19. Cherish f. Sean Paul of Youngbloodz: Do It To It (Main Radio Version)
20. LeToya f. Killa Kyleon: Gangsta Grillz
21. Destiny's Child f. Lil Wayne, TI: Soldier
22. Monica f. Dem Franchize Boys: Everytime Tha Beat Drop
23. Ciara f. Jazze Pha: Goodies
24. Shareefa f. Ludacris: Need A Boss
25. Field Mob f. Ciara: So What

I am about to bid adieu to a long and turbulent decade. It's no coincidence, perhaps, that concurrently I feel a certain dire attraction to irresponsibility. I am maintaining my basic concerns of eating right 4 my blood type, working out every single day, fresh flower arrangements and showing up for work on time. Beyond that, my primary interests include: dating teenagers, getting blunted and playing Super Nintendo. Like, I am actually compelled to do these things, which is entirely hypocritical, considering I have spent the past years in New York questioning friends' annoying propensities to A. date cupcakes and garanimals who don't challenge them and won't even register as a blip in six months, and/or B. binge drink--all in their veiled quests to hang onto their perceived youths.

I think my impulse to go loco on these "last" days of "youth" is A. a desire to pretend I do not care about anything, when probably I care too much and B. direct opposition/rebellion to expectations, or percieved expectations, of the forthcoming decade. By some social barometers this is the pd when life congeals, I think, but as the age pulls up in my rearview I realize that the only thing I want in life is to enjoy summer, partake in the herbal arts, have dance parties, call my senators and read magazines. [Civic duty and intellectual curiosity are ageless.]

Last week I asked Jon, 30, if he had any advice for navigating this point: the concept of the future as a real viable now-ness rather than something to arrive at, having exhausted years of fresh-faced calamity and folly. This is what he who once bore my love said to me: "You have to remember that you don't get any of it back."

Here, now, I am contemplating jazz tapes. I do not exactly care that I am 30, because I still feel like I am 22, maybe even better than I did when I was 22. I definitely work out more.

But I do miss being stupid/drunk on my own idealism. Fearing hope feels dangerous.

And yet.

SEARCH TERMS FOR COWBZ N P'Z:

50.00% poodles
10.00% poems to tell a girl you like her
10.00% vida dub show
10.00% do i look like a fucking people person tshirt
10.00% the poodles
10.00% n cahoots club

As Chris was saying tonight, we have no idea what America will be like in two years, a simultaneously terrifying and uplifting thought. But the immigration rights movement will have a profound and glorious impact on the landscape--yesterday I descended on Union Square to one of the most overwhelming experiences I've had maybe ever-- thousands of people boycotting work, waving flags--Mexico, Puerto Rico, USA, Haiti, Trinidad, everywhere--a critical mass chanting "SI SE PUEDE!" I couldn't help but cry, not weep publicly as I am wont to do but full-on guttural barf-cries, and everyone was so emotional it didn't even feel out of place, and I had just heard the "Nuestro Himno," and was listening to different versions of "Cielito Lindo" all day, trying to find the prettiest and saddest one, cuz I miss and love my grandma and she sang that to me as I slept when I was little, and she would have been so happy and proud to have witnessed today. "Immigrants Built America" and it's true, my grandpa worked something like 430 days straight, sometimes double-shifts, on the Union Pacific Railroad until he died in the '40s, i believe, and my grandma slang tortillas off her front stoop to keep all the kids fed, even up to after I was born, selling packages of torts for i think $2 a dozen, collecting on grandpa's ss money, living in a now sadly-demolished house purchased by my uncle's WWII pay, my uncle btw who had to change his name to O'Day (after Anita O'Day!) because he couldn't be Mexican and a fighter pilot.
Now I am rambling and I have many things to do but SI SE PUEDE. A big F to the Mexican gov't and to GW Bush and love to immigrants everywhere and I will do what I can. More to come.

Also-if anyone actually read my pitchfork column--i forgot you should definitely listen to La Rumeur, too, re: French hip-hop that i recently dug the shit out of. Saian Supa Crew put out a good album too last year but I liked the others better because they were more electronic, i am a snob and i can't speak french that well. but La Rumeur are basically the dead prez of Paris, to make a lazy ass comparison, although their political lyrics are a little more nuanced when you figure that shit out, like put it in a translator. They are fierce.

I finally saw ATL last week with deep-posseist/ dun linguist/Sabres torch-singer Will G.C., and two days later, compelled still, he composed the most extensive text message I have ever received, two paragraphs in length, during business hours, when I did not answer my phone, excerpted as follows (with permission): "Remember the way the camera would pan from the girl crew's feet up to their eyes every time they made an entrance on screen? Shit was DIRTY in retrospect. Yo." YO, INDEED. And, coolly, there was sex and gaze but no real "implied subordinance" in the cameratrix: ATL's man-gaze is not the selfsame man-gaze of yr average eyecandy 2K6, and maybe less man-gazy than, say, Kelis' "Bossy" video. It's from the glossy lens of mister bonnie & clyde, mister fallin', Chris Robinson, director, who films all humans, inanimate objects and other pleasantries, like they've just been basted with honey. His elongated booty shots and gam-to-lipgloss pans were evocative of the friskiness of teens in the heat, those awesome young moments of burgeoning sexual curiosity, when everything gleams candy-apple fine. The camera lingered on T.I.'s luscious mug too, and his alternately sexual/sly eyes-- it woulda been silly not to: T.I. is a perfect argument for the fraternally-twinning, hetero-female and homo man-gazes--Chris Robinson, director, let the camera fix on the mug: TI in a white tee, kissing his girl in the front seat of the car, sinewy and graceful, always focused on the eyes; he kept our brains on track by casting B as a dynamic, ethically airtight rollerskating champ whose only weakness is his fierce love for his little brother and his desire to date an honest girl. No complicated tropes of sensitive thuggery, but no Catholic Omarion, neither: just a nice kid with some nice dreams. Which is partly what I liked about it--it was nuanced but not cliche, innocent but not demoted, and of course, like all my fave love stories/musicals (every one ever made), it dove right into class issues as the crux and test of all attraction.

Here's a good interview with Chris Robinson on NPR, intro'd by Farai Chideya, also known as really fucking awesome jrnlist lady, about Atlanta as "cradle" of black America, and about making movies that convey many-tiered views of black America, as opposed to only choosing between say "hustle & flow" or "soul plane."

I want to see it again.

COINCIDENTaLLY RELATED: also-deep-posseist Nick B. and I broke out to Chioma's b-day party this weekend, celebrated at Empire Skating, BKLYN: the birthplace of roller disco, according to the sign, which I believe because it was carved in wood in a very stoic font. Nick was wearing a fancy sweatshirt that read "SKATE OR DIE."

The last time I stood on skates was on a Tuesday in 1989ish, Jessup Elementary skatenite, Cheyenne Wyoming, when my friends and I spent our allotted $3.50/two hours trying not to fall over, always awkward, cutting the corners even in tandem, during couples' skate, holding hands and wobbly like little fawns.

My knees, and Nick's too if it's ok to say, were all newborn-on-wheels at first, so we rolled around the kids' "just practicin" rink for awhile before we graduated to the fast track. The grown-folks rink was intimidating, demarcated by lifesize neon palm trees and populated by professionals riding customized skates since '78, going at least 20 mph faster than us and making the lights trace out and streak as they whizzed by--so when we were finally good enough to skate there, about an hour in, I was real proud of us.

I did not fall once, and even managed to bounce and snap a little bit. DJ Cue, the man behind the decks, was playing R. Kelly "Ladies Night" upon our arrival, then transitioned into house and "Hot Music," shouting out the "25 and overs," essentially "anytime he plays a song made after 2001," as Nick put it. Then: snaps, bounce, reggae, promoting his own reggae classic mixtape by ADD-edly playing the first three seconds of every track on it, while apologizing because "it's not really skating music," and shouting out "all my Caribbean people," and "all my 25s and over," simultaneously, excessively, endearingly. We decided he was drunk and left around 2, but not before vowing to return at least a gillion more times this season: Empire Skate, a honey-scented summer post-up spot, for reals.