Lana Del Rey and the Forbidden Feminine

LANA DEL REY evokes a world of red lips, intoxicants, deceptively innocent dresses, punky badboys and slick-haired sugar daddies who take you on fast drives down the coast at night. Her songs sound so lushly beautiful that you almost wish to be in them--until you remember how miserable that would be, since they are made of gilded angst, as dark-skied as pop can be. Lana has a Mad Men-esque knack for slathering glamor on turmoil until it's gorgeous. Her new album Ultraviolence is darker even than previous releases and edges into a hazily adulterous, abusive space. Even when she's cooing Ooh baby ooh baby/I'm in love it sounds like a scary place to be.

Her fascinations with quicksand sexuality, meekness and a badgirl variety of transactional romance are irksome and anti-feminist to some. "If we as a society accept the disempowered form of femininity that Del Rey embodies, young women are truly in trouble," read a recent denunciation in Ms.

I think such irking is important. Feminist thought tends to wish away some common, deep-rooted habits of the female mind, like yearning for male attention, fearing aloneness, being enticed by wealth, and that ancient craving for the protection of muscles. (He holds me in his big arms/Drunk and I am seeing stars/This is all I think of, Lana disempoweredly sang on "Video Games.") Even if we choose to sensibly repress such brain habits, lifting the rules to see what may lie beneath serves a real-keeping purpose.

Lana keeps it thusly real. Her sisterly defenders point to every woman's (feminist!) right to be screwed up, and I do not disagree. Lana's music contains disturbing scenarios, which should be heard as earnest art, dark subject matter handled with nuance and skill, rather than judged as bad role modeling. But her words are rarely as shocking as He hit me and it felt like a kiss; she is mostly criticized for the submissive fragility and phallocentric romanticism of her lyrics. The singer Lorde said of Del Rey, "It's so unhealthy for young girls to be listening to, you know: 'I’m nothing without you.' This sort of shirt-tugging, desperate, don’t leave me stuff."

But surely many a woman has had not-proud moments of "don't leave me" shirt-tugging, if only in her own head. Weakness, fear, neediness--and the use of seduction to paper them over--are authentic parts of female experience, and it is valuable to hear a voice that admits to loving foolishly. Lana, singing Need you, baby, like I breathe you, baby, takes us to vulnerable corners of the female psyche that feel forbidden. Her unfeminist vices let us question the unflappable power pose of contemporary womanhood.

WITH HER bombshell image and helpless romanticism, Lana sings sex and love in unusual ways. She doesn't care about uprightness, suitability. She sings desire, desperation, unseemly devotion. She sings the kind of sex that makes you feel unpowerful in a good way (In the land of gods and monsters I was an angel/Looking to get fucked hard) and the kind that makes you feel powerful in a wrong way (Fucked my way up to the top/This is my show.)

She has sufficiently intact romantic sensibilities to remake the deliciously treacly Disney classic "Once Upon A Dream," darkening it almost beyond recognition but still honoring the love dream of the original. The punky badboys and sugar daddies are her antagonists, but also her romantic heroes. This is an artist captivated by love, in all its soaring and crashing. The Lana of her songs is exquisitely, sometimes tragically, vulnerable in love, but savvy enough to know that vulnerability carries its own form of honest power.

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The Drizzy-Jhene Duet of Smooth Ambivalence

   "From Time"

   Drake ft. Jhene Aiko

   Nothing Was The Same

YOU DON'T really hear straight up love songs nowadays. Artists are too cool for You're mine baby I love you old-timey stuff. Everything has to be complicated, flippant, vengeful, sexual, ambivalent.

Drake is undisputed king of complicated, flippant, vengeful, sexual, ambivalent sorta-love songs. He excels (so Jewishly) at hyperanalytic relationship talk. He seems to spend ungodly amounts of time ruminating on woulda-couldas and past flames, which I find endearing and relatable. "From Time" is easily his best riff on this theme, with his neurotics calmed by some understated piano and the placid voice of Jhene Aiko.

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The Clebilicious Review: Born Sinner

    J. Cole

    Born Sinner

J. COLE HAS a soft power delivery. His touch is light, but when he gets his words right they make deep impact. He doesn't wear an armor of swag and yet, in his understated way, he's extremely swaggish. (The author would totally do him. Take that haters.)

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Hurston, Moses and the Responsibilities of Freedom

SUMMER BOOK REPORT
Moses, Man of the Mountain
Zora Neale Hurston

HERE CAME ZORA, to tell me a story I've heard thirty-three times and make it new. Moses, Man of the Mountain is the Exodus story, which I've heard each year on Passover, told in a 1930s southern African American voice. It's like Siddhartha's half-black half-Jewish cousin.

Hurston's biblical characters are not idealized. Aaron is flagrantly annoying; Miriam is bitterly asexual and petty (a far cry from the feminist hero of Debbie Friedman songs and lefty Haggadahs); Zipporah is kinda superficial; Pharoah is not an avataric demon, but a man flawed by grudges and pomposity. Moses is heroic, but in the manner of a real person: arguing with himself about the right things to do, mad at the feebleness of others, forever hated upon.


MOSES SUFFERS the burdens of leadership, and his poll numbers swing with the Israelites shifting fortunes. They are capable of idolizing him when things go well, but even happier to blame him when things go wrong, at which point they go on about how they were better off under Pharoah. Instead of assessing the man and what he has done or tried to do, they take a look around and wail,  He's in charge! And everything sucks! 

Leaders make sacrifices. Hair grays; privacy disappears and responsibilities never do. You might want to just go hoop with Malia or whatever, but the lives of other people are in your hands, and a true leader is acutely aware of the fact. For all the worry: you may never see the Promised Land.


THIS BOOK also concerns what my Bat Mitzvah speech rather bombastically called 'The Responsibilities of Freedom.' Much as a slave yearns to be free, and celebrates when freed, the moment of liberation is actually only the beginning of a rough climb. Just the unshackling is not freedom. The enslaved have been robbed of the opportunity to grow minds and wills of their own; the Israelites spent forty years in the desert battling to become free selves before they could enter the Promised Land.

Hurston writes:

[Moses] found out that no man can make another free. Freedom was something internal...All you could do was to give the opportunity for freedom and the man himself must make his own emancipation. He remembered how often he had had to fight Israel to halt a return to Egypt and slavery. Responsibility had seemed too awful to them time and time again.

THAT IS also a perfect example of how Hurston wrote. She chose simple words when fancy ones were not needed. Her version of the Exodus helped me think about two peoples, hers and mine, and the struggles they have faced in that long desert between Egypt and the Promised Land.

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Nicki and a Lane of One's Own

Though I wanted my review to be just between me and Nicki's sophomore album, an interloper kept appearing. I found myself arguing with a straw man. In hipsterish dishevelment would he glance up from his Complex mag screen to hate upon Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded and pine for 'mixtape Nicki.'

His disdain crept in like a finger of frost, killing my enjoyment of tender annuals like "Starships" and "Masquerade." Nor could the solid rapping of "Stupid Hoe" please him; he facilely declared Nicki to be the stupid hoe, with her excessive weirdness and annoying voice. He called "Beez in the Trap" acceptable and gave "Champion" a mild cosign (though the latter came with open speculation about why Nas would thusly lower himself).

I will now muzzle the straw man so I can tell you how much I like this album. To placate him, I will begin where we most nearly agree.

When I (of course) pre-ordered the album and perused the track listing, I spotted "Champion," which purported to feature Drake, Jeezy and Nas. Imagine my delight. Within moments I'd cycled through the emotions, from thrilled anticipation to fear of dashed expectations to modest but fervent hope.

And indeed this song is really goddamn good. It opens on a soaring beat that sounds like a slow-mo finish line cross, arms aloft. "Chariots of Fire" for rap. Nicki sets the tone with a smooth blend of boast and ghetto-groundedness. Drizzy is no stranger to triumph and chimes in with Okay we made it to America and Nowadays blow the candles out don't even make a wish. And what's that I hear? Ah, the low smolder of the Jeezy growl! (I swear if Jeezy recorded Ulysses I could get through the shit.) Then Nas, the unimpeachable; one can but kneel and kiss the muhfuckn ring.

"Champion" also made me notice that Nicki's become quite the hookmistress. She's got the impactful wail on that song, a few licks learned perhaps from Gyptian for the islandy treat "Gunshot," the earborer "Right By My Side" chorus. I wanted to resent a pop&B song with Chris Brown, but resistance proved futile. If this is pop I'm getting really into pop.


The commonest naysayage about this album is exactly that: It's so pop, whines the straw man. I see it this way: Nicki composed a solid hip hop album, stacked with production, impeccable verses, the requisite guest spots. Then she got a bunch of sugary dancefloor beats, topped them with swag icing and rap sprinkles, and made the album half dessert. Hardly the worst thing.

Some of those pop songs happen to be great. "Va Va Voom" is a worthy successor to "Super Bass": bangingly superficial, and supportive of a cause dear to my heart, that of male objectification. "Pound the Alarm" could make me tear a club limb from limb. It contains this:

Bottle, sip

Bottle, guzzle

I'ma badbitch no muzzle

Which brings me to what I call The "Beez in the Trap" Paradox. It goes like so: if Nicki makes songs that flash the badge of hip hop cred (ooh a sing-songy old school chorus! measured, emphatic raps! manly swagger!) she is keeping it real. If she makes corny pop ballads or club bangers she is pandering and selling out. 

It is understandable that most people prefer to hear Nicki rap rather than sing. That I get. But is not a rapper's top job to spit smart lyrics that sound slick? What part of "Beez" does that better than I'ma badbitch no muzzle or I am the ultimate Svengali/You bitches can't even spell that/You hoes buggin, repel that--both from straw man-dissaproved tracks? Could we not just as easily call "Beez" the pander and sappily sincere "Marilyn Monroe" or fantastically strange "Roman Holiday" the risks?

Straw man may not like it, but there is an oft-corny popstar inside Nicki, and it has clearly been yearning to breathe free. Her pop efforts will fall flat on some ears, but I do believe this is the album Nicki wanted to make. Rap fans can be some conservative muthafuckas, and Nicki is pretty good at ignoring their shocked expressions every time she breaks code.

A rapper is not supposed to dilute the brand by being too soft or weird or accessible. But Nicki could give a fuck less what the rules are. Nor should an artist give a fuck what the rules are.

Nicki explodes out wildly in every possible direction, no matter what happens to be in the way. For that reason she always reminds me of the most important thing: To thine own self be true. Always do you.

IN THE VIDEOPLOG EDITION: clips of aforementioned PF: RR tracks, my "Stupid Hoe" breakdown and cameos from the straw man.





Related  posts: 
Hey Nicki! Hey Nicki! Asthmatic Ode to Nicki Minaj
Millennial Rappers: The 2011 Albums

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Millennial Rappers, The 2011 Albums

VIDEOPLOGGERY: Mini-reviews of five fave 2011 albums by Millennial Rappers to be found herein. Wishing you more good music--as well as non-musical good--for 2012.

Q: What do you mean "Millennial Rappers"?

A: Why that's the very first thing discussed in the video!

Q: Guess I'll watch then. Do you perchance do any videohoery in here?

A: ... :) ...

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Hey Nicki! Hey Nicki! Asthmatic Ode to Nicki Minaj

WHEN FIRST I heard "Your Love" on KMEL, I thought I had met it in the sky. Nicki's arrival had the same effect; I didn't know she was somebody I'd been waiting for, and I already can't fathom a hip hop world without her.

Nicki Minaj exists on so many planes she might fool you. First come the pink wig and flaunted ass, daring you to underestimate her. Then there are the many faces, many voices, Nicki as self-created cultural artifact. But rip off all the shiny packaging and you find an artist with talent and heart. (Also be advised you'll want to re-use such nice wrapping paper.)

An obtuse observer could mistake her sexiness for a cheap appeal to men, but in fact her brew of brazen sexuality and conquering power is bound to baffle and terrify many males. (Hence, When I throw this p**** you better not start duckin.) It's not easy to find straight male Nicki fans. Men seem to want to watch her, but from a safe distance.

She appeals, instead, to women. Nicki is power, and transmits power. On some advanced like fifth wave feminism shit. In this she differs vastly from beefmate Lil Kim, whose kittenish sexuality, while powerful in its day in its way, is less threatening, and voluntarily subordinate. Nicki would never list herself after Wayne the way Kim deferentially self-seconded once upon a time: Brooklyn home of the greatest rappers/Big comes first then the Queen comes after.



Nicki shrewdly combines her Barbie wigs with aggressive rapping, one of many replications of her perfectly calibrated hard-soft dichotomy. See also her person, with its sharp points and soft pillows, and her voice personas, which range from babyish to thug murderous. And unlike Lil Kim and Foxy Brown, who specialized in a delicious ghetto brand of sexual aggression (yeah I said it: specialized) , Nicki's aggression is general. Thus does Barbie also get accused of being too masculine.


AND SHE DOES channel masculinity when she feels like it, calling upon male alter ego Roman Zolanski. Suffice it to say that Roman can go head to head with that paean to male aggression known as Slim Shady. (It is understood that regular Eminem is a marshmallow Peep compared to this alter ego; Shady is the one still stuffing ladies in the trunk after all these years.) Over a scary railroad track of a beat, courtesy of Swizz Beatz, Roman and Shady defile and destroy anything and anyone in the vicinity. My favorite bit is in her second verse:

I hear the mumblin
I hear the cacklin
I got em scared, shook, panickin
Overseas, church, Vatican
You at a stand-still: mannequin

Next she breaks out the emotional matter, ranging from the glorious romantic phantasm of "Your Love" to the relationshipal nitty gritty of "Right Thru Me." The most powerful lyric in the latter goes simply, Okay you're right/Just let it go.

"Dear Old Nicki," in which Minaj openly grapples with her past self, is the most honest work of self-reflection I've heard from a rapper. Stars so often have unglamorous former versions hiding in a closet, those easily embarrassing rough drafts along the editing process of self-creation. It's quite a feat to embrace an old self while deciding to move beyond it. But Nicki can.

After all the serious work is over, it's end-of-album party time. The bangingly superficial "Super Bass," waiting to be discovered by club turntables everywhere, celebrates her own femme version of fun pimpery:

I am Nicki Minaj
I mack them dudes up
Back coupes up
And chuck the deuce up

NICKI IS PART of a cadre of Millennial rappers who realized in the nick of time that rap had staled into its own conventions in need of flouting. She is joined by Young Money labelmates Lil Wayne, the eyelid tattoo alien, and Drake, the matinee idol psychoanalyst. Peers include the dapper-suited philosopher of hard-partying Kid Cudi, and political nerd Lupe Fiasco. These Millennial rappers aren't nervously checking their street cred every five minutes, and so are free to explore uncharted terrain, like singing their own hooks, wearing eyeglasses, collaborating with rockboys, riding skateboards, experiencing ambivalence. And at long last, Andre 3000 has challengers for the weirdness throne.



Nicki, with her many guises and cartoon curves*, is trailed by an inevitable misapprehension that she is phony. (To which she responds: If I'm fake I ain notice cause MY MONEY AIN'T.) But her rapid rotation of wigs and voices is rooted in theatricality--she studied drama at LaGuardia High, the "Fame" school--and her embodiment of so many Nickis is a way of claiming every possible iteration of self, as well as an acknowledgment that to rap, after all, is to wear a persona.

*Her improbable ass to waist ratio does have this perfectly logical explanation: she's on a diet, but her pockets are eating cheesecake.

Were she sexplosion only: dayenu. But she can do sex, she can do glam, she can do swag, she can do love. She can be scary, zany, savvy, vulnerable, introspective--often under the same wig on the same song. She can murder a Swizzy beat then hopscotch across a will.i.am confection. Her strength is her stubborn unwillingness to be any one thing, least of all whatever you might want her to be. And I'm not just saying that as an X-pon-tittie Barb stan. Though to be one is a privilege.

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Born-Again Baduizt Part Two: Return of the Donk

IT WOULD have been nice if Erykah Badu made just the album I wanted. It would have had all the philosophical depth of New AmErykah Part One and all the yarn-spinning and sensuality of Mama's Gun and even better grooves than Worldwide Underground and would have taught me everything I need to know.

But it doesn't work that way. Badu made the album she needed to make, and it's on me to love it or leave it. Being a proper fan is probably good training for all kinds of other relationships.

I know I've no right to write music reviews. I'm not qualified. I don't understand music, even though I consume it in gobs. So people say New AmErykah Part Two is more acoustically au naturel whereas Part One was more pre-fabby, and I believe them, because* it sounds that way, now that they mention it. But I'd never have thought that up. I share my day job with a pro violist and find her world of wooden objects foreign and fascinating. I'm flattered to use the same mouse as such magic hands. Writing is not cool like that.
*This phraseology is meant to be Colbertish.

What I can tell you, experientially, is that Part Two is emotional journey while Part One was bombastic blaxpoitation soundtrack. But it makes leisurely tracks across sophisticated emotional terrain, far from the rawness of my perennial favorite Badu song, "I Want You." For those in need of review, the archetypically Baduizt prescriptions therein contained for the affliction of being sprung on some dude:

1. pray til early May
2. fast for thirty days
3. get a good book and get all in it
4. try a little yoga for a minute
5. turn the sauna up to hotter
and, 6. drink a whole jar of holy water (an entire jar!)

Badu appears to be done drinking holy water. On Part Two, she sounds cozy and requited. Which must be nice. This album doesn't have a natural single, a "Honey" or a "Danger." So "Window Seat" is the one getting tossed out for broad consumption, which is kinda random. It's not the awesomest song ever, but I object to criticism that it's a throwback to the Baduizm days. Nothing on that ankhdafied proto-Badu album was as cool as:

So, out my mind I'm tusslin
Back and forth tween here and hustlin
I don't wanna time travel no more
I want to be here
I'm thinkin
On this porch I'm rockin
Back and forth like Lightnin' Hopkins
If anybody speak to Scotty tell him beam me up

When New AmErykah Part Three comes out (oh yeah: there's a Part Three; you know it), I might as well just turn immediately to whatever track exceeds the ten-minute mark, because those weird, ambivalent, endless jams always become my favorites.

On Part Two, the weird, ambivalent, endless jam niche is filled by "Out My Mind, Just In Time." Throughout the whole ten minutes she never decides whether she is crazy or not, which--I don't know about you, but that's how I go through each day. It does that signature Badu trick of seeming like one track ends and another begins--the mood, the music, the gist of the lyrics may all change; silence may even occur--but no! Still the same song. And when you really listen to one of these smushies it's not just a cute ploy; the parts are rightfully of the same song. It's like with semi-colons; surely these are two necessarily-tethered independent clauses, not separate sentences in need of punctuational chastening.

Another good smush, should you need one, comes on Part One's "Master Teacher." That song also abets my theory that there is a Badu song suited for any mindstate. "Master Teacher" is for insomnia: I have longed to stay awake/Beautiful world I'm tryna find.

The best part of "Out My Mind" comes at one of its about-face seams. She shifts from delicately-sprouting optimism to:

MaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAn
Fuck this shit
Fuck this shit

That bit totally played in my head when I had to sit full days at the reception desk. (The pro violist skipped town for a spell.)

On the opposite end of two spectra--length, seriousness--comes the album's comic miniature track, "You Loving Me," which, in typical Erykah expectation-thwartation fashion, is not a lovey song at all. In its entirety, it goes:

[Badu sounds]
You lovin me, and I'm drivin your Benz
You lovin me, and I'm spendin your ends
You lovin me, and I'm drinkin your gin
You lovin me, and I'm fuckin your friends
[repeat]
You lovin me
[mutters That's terrible isn't it, and chuckles]

Erykah would never do those mean things! Why did she think that up? It's so needless and silly and catchy.

And yes, there's a collab with Lil Wayne because Badu does hear my prayers. It's a romp. He kinda sounds like he's freestyling. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I know he doesn't write shit cause he ain got time.


DON'T WORRY. I am going to talk about the nekkid video. Of course I'm gonna talk about the nekkid video. Badu has generously offered for us all to make of it what we will. So to me it's about unlayering. Which, in turn, is about performance.

Speakinawhich, I saw her perform at Oakland's renewed Fox Theater back in February. Seeing Badu live was not the easy adulative experience I'd anticipated. Goapele, who opened for her, is slick and unconscionably beautiful, and while she is a fairy godmother in her own right,* she seemed like a feeble pop star compared to Badu. Goapele gave us what we wanted. Erykah was making some obscure demand and promising to make it worth our while, like the mean teacher who actually has high hopes for you.
*I hate this phrase. Its use pertaining to the wife of an impressive man should be banned.

She started out inaccessibly weird and excessively clothed and inversed both ways as the night wore on, so when I watched the nekkid video, the theme was already familiar. The show's chailight came when she was down to just glitter pants and purple t-shirt. She led a sing-along to "Ain't No Fun," that classic West Coast posse cut which posits that if the homies cannot partake of the lady you are enjoying that enjoyment is curtailed, and I've never felt so elated singing Cause you gave me all your puss-ay/And you even licked my balls.

Who knew misogyny could be so efficiently undercut by mockery? But then co-optation of the oppressor is a fine tradition. It's why gay people took 'queer' and black people took the 'n' word. (Also why I took 'Cleb,' but long story.) Winking co-optation succeeds where rants fail. During the part that goes, And if you can't fuck that day baby/Just lay back, and open ya mouth, Badu tipped her head back and opened her mouth and aimed her mic there. It was hilario.

Onstage and in the "Window Seat" video, Badu's protective opener armor is peacoat, hoodie up, lots of articles. (It's like Game says: My mind fucked up, so I cover it with a Raider hood.) She sheds that protection in layers, with determination and care. Art demands self-exposure, but overexposure might kill you. The video evokes the work and risk of trodding one's individual path. She walks with unmistakable purpose. When I listen to "Window Seat" while walking home along Lake Merritt, I may or may not walk thusly myself. And may or may not loose my hair from its tyrannical clip in dramatic fashion at some pivotal moment.

Badu specializes in what they call 'brave vulnerability,' a thankless specialty. If it weren't bad enough to have your soul all naked, you also get demeaned as a pussified emotionalist. This strikes me as the opposite of, say, intellectualism, war and sports--pursuits that garner such ready respect.


NOT THAT that's why she did the Dallas stripdown. She did it because she heard that her #1 stan said this:

My only problem with [the song "Me"] is the part when she says "my ass and legs have gotten thick." If you have seen any recent pictures of stick figure Badu, you'll understand why this is offensive to those of us in the thick community.

Erykah: I am so sorry. Point taken. Your boomboom might mine own exceed in size. The thick community welcomes you.
xoxo,
Cleb

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Melanie The Incorrigible

MEET MY LATEST BESTIE, Melanie Fiona. She’s Guyanese-Canadian, because in the Obama era hybrid vigor is the new black.

Melanie says everyone recognizes the beat from her first single, “Give It To Me Right,” but can't place it, so I’m proud to proclaim that I called the sample—“Time Of The Season”!—right away.

“Give It To Me Right” could be mistaken for a standard radio skank track, and while I think it’s more than that, I also bear no grudge against skank tracks. “Ill Na Na” is way more *empowering* than any India.Arie kandy korn. Or try Cassie’s “Me & U,” which pulls off the ultimate coup of being slutty yet sweet. The trick is maintaining your charm and your halo; Kelis taught me that, and she only charged 99 cents.

I would say “GITMR” manages the same tightrope act, but Andrea Martin, who wrote the song for Mel, declares that it's not about sex. Yeah no of course not. It’s just about like wanting people to keep it real and stuff. (Don’t tell the guys, but such eyelash-batting innocence is part of the trick.)

This introduction may paint Melanie as a sexpot temptress, but that’s just her radio persona. The slightest scratch at the album’s surface reveals the hopeless romantic underneath. “You Stop My Heart” is pure malt shop swoon. It pairs well with my running favorite “Johnny,” a song that is girl groupy (= Cleb catnip) and makes heartbreak sound somehow fun.


SOUL SINGERS are practically the only ones who believe in love these days. We are meant to worship at the altar of the sensible, antiseptic Relationship; that full-cardio arduous, hideous, glorious thing called love is too sloppy and impractical for any adequately-analyzed modern citizen. We speak ruefully of 'partners,' of 'making it work,' and are so wise to the perils of infatuation as to damn near eschew its joys. As diligently as we lecture about the grinding labor a Relationship requires, the A-student could come to view cohabitational partnership as one more over-achiever's trophy, and love as mere irresponsible folly.

It can be jarring, then, to hear naive Melanie singing, I'll walk these streets all night until I bring my baby home. You can just picture her enlightened friends raising one eyebrow, like, Giiirlheainworthit. Because today’s faux-strong woman doesn’t deign lower herself to “Ain’t Misbehavin’” on the happy hand, nor “Black Coffee” on the sad. And then we have the audacity to whine from our impenetrable towers about where have all the Lloyd Doblers gone.

We are comfortable instead in the To the left to the left/Everything you own in a box to the left mold, in which despair curdles straight to vengeful stiletto anger—a move we presumably cribbed from old-fashioned faux-strong men, and the insipid Sex and the City. (And who but ventriloquist dummy Beyonce would sing a song called “Irreplaceable” that means “Replaceable.” Still, I do enjoy singing it with my garden class girls. It’s pretty cute when fifth-graders say, Baby you dropped them keys/Hurry up before your taxi leaves.)

Melanie is also under the woeful misapprehension that hotness and tender-heartedness need not be mutually exclusive. Sorry, Mel: if you're hot you must be an evil temptress. It’s just that simple.


EVEN WHEN THE impression is flawless, it’s boring to replicate the old. Sharon Jones may be good, but she just makes me think, Hey, I could be listening to Mary Wells right now. Melanie--like Amy, like Leela--knows how to engage the authenticity of the classic but make it new. Hence the album's title, The Bridge.

“Johnny” mixes scratching with an American Bandstand sound, and she's dialing on her cellphone begging Johnny to bring her back her heart. (Wow, how contemporary and high-tech!*) “Cry Baby” samples the Vandellas' “Jimmy Mack,” which makes me very happy. It also uses cool distorted vocals and so sounds rather like that old-timey Fergie song "Clumsy," but with the merciful excision of Fergie. And just to flaunt her hybrid vigor, Melanie throws in some reggaeish tracks, and breaks out her Debbie Harry swagger for "Bang Bang."

*That was my inner critic teasing me.

OF COURSE, poetic injustice, “Single Ladies” bested Melanie’s “It Kills Me” for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the Grammys. What kills me is that the former, despite its goddamn stupid lyrics, actually is the better song, although Melanie is by far the superior artist. (Or even merely deserves the word.) Factory-farmed crap is sometimes tasty, I suppose.

“It Kills Me” is now making the radio rounds, and while she delivers the song with heart, I think Melanie's nature is more joyful than mournful. For a badboy lament, I’d sooner recommend Keyshia’s classic “I Should’ve Cheated.” And when you really need dark depths, put Amy on. Melanie is more suited to making the best of things.


Beware the evil temptress.


Cute real Melanie. Equally a threat.

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So You Think You Can (Steal My Heart)

Oh dear. 'Keteers, you know of the Clebster's special weakness for gay*, black, male teens. Well, dance phenom Brandon Bryant is just fiddling on my heartstrings:




*I'm going out on a limb to presume he is gay. It's a pretty short limb (see mohawk, scarf), but still a tad rude.

Such poise for one so young! His balletic technique wants for nothing, and he integrates elements from every corner of the dance world, diving into breaker moves with the grace of a modern dancer.

Bryant was the darling of So You Think You Can Dance's DC auditions. The guy's got charm you can't fake.

I loved how he was all humble/grateful/taken aback when the judges praised him, which is just what they want (You're the one to inform me of my brilliance!) and then got cocky during his backstage ticket-to-Vegas celebration. (Black people get to be cocky. It's a Muhammed Ali thing. Don't hate.)

It's come to this. I have to vote on a reality show. And Paulie has to send away for an autographed pec pic.

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Wednesdays Are Always Blue

BOOK REVIEW
Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant
Daniel Tammet



DANIEL TAMMET can recite 22,514 digits of pi--five hours, no mistakes--and learned Icelandic (Icelandic!) in a week. But don't be jelly of his brain powers. Asperger's is no picnic. Tammet endured potentially fatal seizures, an entire childhood of ostracism, guilt over the trouble he caused his parents and intensive battles with his own petulant brain before reaching the comfortable plateau of domestic bliss and demi-celebrity where he currently resides. Did I mention he's gay?

Why beat around the bush: I loved this book. It doesn't hurt that the "blue day" in question was exactly one week before my own wee birthday, which would make it way too easy for Tammet to tell me that was a Wednesday. (His savant powers include calendrical calculation, the ability to tell what day of the week any given date falls.) "Wednesdays are always blue," he explains in the book's opening paragraph, "like the number 9 or the sound of loud voices arguing."

Like many autistic savants, Tammet has synesthesia, which means that he experiences numbers and words unusually. He strongly associates numbers with specific colors and images. (When he met David Letterman, he declared the talk show host looked like the number 117: "tall and lanky.") He also writes about how certain words make him feel. I will never be able to envision the digits of pi as a soothing landscape of hills, but with the words I think I get it. The word "Clebilicious" makes me feel cute inside, whereas, "Fergalicious"--yuck. At least don't spell it with an "a."


WHILE Tammet's mental struggles take place on an unimaginable scale, his neuroses are universally human. He quests to be at peace with his limitations and embrace his gifts. He yearns for understanding, acceptance, love.

He also has to strike a balance between overcoming his psychological tics and accomodating them. He has learned, for example, that if he drops a spoon while doing dishes, meltdown will ensue. So he slowly steps away from the sink and lets it pass. We should all be so serene. (Shit, I should be so serene.)

Three-quarters of the way through the book, I turned the page to find a chapter entitled "Falling in Love," and my eyes teared up. You can't help but want this guy to be happy. Tammet's relationship with honey bunny Neil is almost unbearably sweet. For someone like Tammet--being, well, weird--it is particularly meaningful to be wholly understood and accepted by another person.


DID I mention he's really into vegetable gardening? He touches on it in the book, but in the documentary about him, Brain Man (he kinda hated the title), the back garden at his home in Herne Bay, England is featured as an important source of equanimity. (Oh yeah, did I mention he's British? Could I possibly not adore him?)

By the end of the book, Tammet has traveled an immense distance from his childhood--attested to by the fact that he wrote a book. It's hard for anyone on the autistic spectrum to express emotions and it's hard for anyone on the human spectrum to write a book. So, yes, his mind is extraordinary. But what makes this book such a great read is Tammet's extraordinary heart.

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Always Got the Hind Tit

BOOK REVIEW
Little Heathens




Just when this blog was aching for some white and WASPy subject matter, here comes Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression, a memoir penned by my new imaginary grandma, Mildred Armstrong Kalish.

Little Heathens is deeply cute. And when I say something is cute, by no means am I calling it trivial or cloying. I take my cuteness quite seriously. This book is cute as in wholesome, heart-warming and earnest. It made me feel like I was curled up beside a fire eating fresh-baked cookies in a fuzzy bathrobe with a kitten in my lap.

Speaking of kittens, here's how Kalish and her younger sister bundled up on cold winter nights:

After placing a thick featherbed on the mattress, we covered it with a heavy flannel double-length blanket, which we tucked in at the foot of the bed, creating a snug sack...After donning our heavy wool nighties, we hopped into bed and pulled the blankets and quilts completely over our heads, then snuggled together like two spoons. We were permitted one or two kittens, which would find us on their own and snuggle at our feet near the warm stones.

Permitted one or two kittens. To think, I permit myself one or two kittens regularly.

Harsh Iowa winters are only the beginning. Kalish and her siblings and cousins--the "little heathens" of the title--survive endless chores, lash-enforced rules, a scarcity of modern medicine and mind-boggling levels of thrift. (Scrape insides of eggshells with your finger so as not to miss any precious egg whites.) Kalish's family leaps high hurdles to fulfill basic needs. Just to get dinner on the table, the pig has to be slaughtered, the water pumped, the wood gathered, the fire started, the eggs collected, the vegetables picked, the bread baked.

Oh yeah, and it's the Great Depression.

But the book is written from a child's perspective, and it's really about the best kind of kid stuff: running ecstatically through a rainstorm, picking sun-warmed strawberries, inhaling the sweet smell of a lamb's fur, and tagging along after the Big Kids. The Little Kids, among whom eighty-four year-old Kalish counts herself, are always "getting the hind tit." (Among barnyard litters, the runts settle for the less milky, rearward mammary glands.)

The country pleasures in this book are made all the sweeter by the fact that you get to read with curiosity about the frigid outhouses and entire tedious days spent on laundry without having to experience either.

After one Iowa winter too many, Kalish eventually moved to California. "I prefer to sit by an open fire and listen to Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra sing songs about the ice and the cold and the snow," she writes, "rather than experiencing them firsthand."

Likewise, Little Heathens is the best way to experience, secondhand, childhood on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression.

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Superhead, Meet Supercleb

BOOK REVIEW
Confessions of a Video Vixen



Got a chick named Super-head
She give super-head
Just moved in the buildin, even gave the super head
Jadakiss, "Blood Pressure"

So begins the story of the most hated woman in hip hop. Well, not with the super getting head, but with Ja Rule and his Murder Inc. compatriots re-gifting the nickname Jadakiss had originally bestowed on the generous lady friend in the song.

Karrine Steffans, hip hop groupie, "video vixen" was the recipient.

I was finally able to get my grubby little hands on her 2005 memoir sans the shame of having to admit I was buying it (great Hannukkah present, Bri, thanks!) and devoured it within seventeen hours of arrival. That the book discussed the respective endowments of Shaq and Vin Diesel had nothing to do with my reading pace.

Want the rest of the list? Kool G Rap, Ice T, Ja Rule, Irv Gotti, "Papa" (=Method Man, according to Crim & Assoc.), Puffy, Ray J, Fred Durst (random!), Xzibit, DMX, Bobby Brown, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Usher, probably hundreds of unnamed athletes and music industry execs.

Sup, you could do with some editing. Of those, only Method Man, Vin Diesel and maybe Xzibit actually seem sexy when you think about it. And when you read about it.

Don't read this book unless you're prepared to have a big shit taken on your sexual fantasies about rappers. Kool G Rap beats her, Irv Gotti pimps her. Most of the rest take their fellatio apportionment with bizarre matter-of-factness, buy her some shit and move on.

And she doles out the apportionments in kind, with skillful efficiency. There are actual torrid affairs with a few of the aforementioned, but what takes place with most is a weird, sterile transaction in which both parties seem to know they have to do this, so they get on with it, already. The more famous the man, the less pleasant the sex: witness her mediocre fifteen minutes with Puffy (p. 149), gross baths in Shaq's copious sweat (p. 144) and grimy, late-night hotel encounter with Dr. Dre before he started working out (p. 115).

But the book never really tries to explain why. Readers get to see her being cruelly abused as a child and raped at age thirteen; we generally gather that she has a great gaping void which must be filled with famous cock. She does explain that, through all of it, she is miserable, addicted to fame, money and drugs.

But with her standing right there at the crossroads of so many fascinating social forces--race, fame, sex, gender, hip hop--I couldn't help wanting her to apply more of that fellatistic ambition to her writing, to give me not just the wheres and the hows and what they ordered from room service, but the WHY DID YOU DO THIS?

Maybe it's unfair of me to expect so much in the way of analytical skills from Sup. Although she does reclaim her by-then-shameful nickname at the end of the book's journey, explaining that in England "superhead" means something like "brainiac."

Gripes aside, I like Sup. She certainly does keep it real. It's no fun having the great army of hip hop ready to kill you with its bare hands. She broke the unspoken code and infuriated rappers and their followings, which says a lot about who the code hurt and helped in the first place.

They didn't see it coming, which is kind of delicious. You just get the feeling that all those guys thought they were in the warm mouth of a pleasure robot, not a living woman who just might fuck and tell.

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Too Slicko

Tuesday I saw Michael Moore's new flick "Sicko." Yeah, I know it isn't out yet. Preview screening, bitch.

It's a very powerful movie which I recommend seeing. So kudos to Mr. Moore; I'm no hater. But something about his movies rubs me the wrong way.

His message always seems to be, Things are way simpler than you think. Here's the problem; it's super sucky. Here's the solution; it's super easy. All that's getting in the way are bad guys, but if the salt-of-the-earth heroes of the movie all band together, and you join them, even the bad guys can be overcome.

Well, that may sometimes be the case. But I get this uncomfortable feeling that Moore thinks he has to present me with a watertight oversimplification of an issue in order to convince me of its urgency.

In addition to being a little insulting to us the audience, I think this strategy actually weakens Moore's case. He spends his two hours giving you a sock in the gut, and you're left in speechless agreement. But by the next day the message wears off and your belly feels a little sore.

I guess I'm skeptical of campaigns. I would rather have an issue ripped open and explained in great depth. (And in fairness, Moore does a good bit of both regarding health insurance companies in "Sicko.")

Don't smooth the rough edges, Senor Mooro. Trust us with the messy truth.

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