D’angelo is in fine form
“You all just want to see what he looks like !” Kojo the comedian said as he warmed up a crowd that had a more balanced female:male ratio that I would have imagined.
He was right. D’angelo, the candidate for the most lusted after male artist of the 90s, became more known for an association with cocaine, alcohol and encounters with the police. The multi-instrumentalist and vocal maestro remembered for a body sculpted for sin, had really let himself go.
Have you seen this man?
It wasn’t an undignified Lindsey Lohan descent into bad teeth and lockdown. But that one picture of an overweight man with debris on his face was enough to make a lot of black women in their 20s lock the memories of D’angelo in the box called ‘nostalgia’ and hope Jason Derulo doesn’t go the same way.
We really needed D’angelo to make a comeback. Usher, Omarian, Mario, Lloyd etc. don’t make soul music. They barely play instruments and they are only as good as their producers. D’angelo was our Prince for the 90s – artists today could never sing tracks Brown Sugar or Africa, keen as they are to have their mass, choreographed appeal. D’angelo was at the centre of neo-soul.
So yes, we wanted to know what he looked like – badly. We also wanted to know something more important: ‘does he still sound the same?’ Singers can be fat and girls will still fancy them. No one want to pass the time with someone who sounds like Lee from Steps.
D'angelo's back!
I don’t know what rehabilitation route D’angelo took but he needs to call Whitney, Bobby, Lindsay and Frankie Cocozza and hook them up. The voice is even better than it sounds on CD. He range is frighteningly in tact, his James Brown screams were iconic and I don’t recall hearing anything out of place.
The show was one for the card carrying members of the Brown Sugar and Voodoo clubs (not having much more to choose from anyway) and he made his way through electrified versions of Chicken Grease, Devil’s Pie, Cruisin’ and Feel Like Makin’ Love.
Wearing what could only be described as an asymmetric string rag and a heavily mis-shapen vest that exposed him in all the right places, he looked like a reinvented D’angelo who is still doing the same things; working out, singing great and playing live with bags of soul. Only now, he’s experimenting with neo-rock.
The Jimi Hendrix vibe he was chasing got too much in places. All the guitars were switched up to 11 and half way through there was a Spinal Tap moment when a guitar solo that bore no resemblance the accompaniment went on for a bit too long.
However, credit to him for not doing strolling on to the stage, stripping down to his pants, singing Untitled and then leaving. Because most of us would have found that value for money. Instead, he gave modern day R’n'B crooners food for thought: could they lead a live band for 90 minutes then sit behind a keyboard and run through every song on a 17 year old record that still sounds astonishing?
D’angelo is back.
Isn’t it a British saying: Spare the rod and spoil the child?
Yesterday morning I scrolled through the Sunday papers on my phone and came across the following article that naturally had to be shared with my social network:
Thinking it was a flash in the pan, I moved on. It seemed fair enough; many parents had commented publically in post riot vox-pops about their fear of controlling their children with physical contact. It was an issue also raised by Hackney heroine herself, Pauline Pearce.
Instead, this story really got people talking. Social services are probably talking to David Lammy as we speak – he confessed to slapping his kids when they act out of line in his article.
Politically, I think Britain has a strange relationship with child-rearing and punishment. Struggling to banish the memories of school boys in short trousers being called to the front of a drafty Victorian classroom to be spanked hard on the arse for some petty misdemeanor with a cane, British politicians have sought to banish the idea inflicting pain on a child is of benefit to discipline.
Old school
Britain seemed happier to push the ideal of childhood, the idea of innocence. The programme, ‘Every Child Matters’ wasn’t about delivering any real goals, it was about tailoring a childhood designed to meet the needs of every child, not matter how intelligent, how thick, how poor or how naughty.
However, since this discourse has been pushed, we have managed to produce some of the most undisciplined children on the planet – if tales from inner city comprehensives are to be believed. I think our youth get a bad rep, but I do I think there is some truth in the idea that our young people are finding it easier to be led astray then ever before.
The argument for smacking has been two fold, emcompassing culture and class. The cultural argument is that people from nations where young people are expected to show respect to their elders, countries in Africa, the Caribbean, East and Southern Asia (heck, everywhere except here really), it is thought right to smack a child to assert authority.
It is also thought right to smack a child to protect one from danger or bad choices. I’ll never forget the beating I got because I thought it would be a fun game to walk to primary school taking pigeon steps on the kerbside of a busy road. Or the time my Mum left me and my brother in shopping centre on the proviso we didn’t separate and come home together. I came alone. My brother arrived two hours later, and he got the slipper treatment too.
It is argued working class children face more opportunities for high jinx and parents need to be able to call on a good old fashioned slap for times a talking too won’t do.
I couldn’t agree more with the cultural argument. We don’t have a background of smacking children routinely because we enjoy it, most disciplined nations smack children in circumstances where a good stinging smack is called for. It’s important to distinguish between corporal punishment and disciplining.
I’m not sure about the class one. Every time I see some teenager in the Daily Mail who makes the news because they have OD’d its normally a posh one with rich parents – how else could they afford class A drugs? Middle class kids get up to terrible things too.
The main argument against is the obvious one: smacking is tantamount to child abuse.
I disagree wholeheartedly.
I think that the differences between child abuse and child disciplining are extremely wide and obvious and cannot think of one circumstance in which the lines are blurred. Some parents are uncomfortable with the idea of using pain to teach a child. Some parents are not. The key is to understand that as a parent, you know what’s best for your child. Society certainly knows the difference between a smack and abuse and if it doesn’t – then something is wrong.
David Lammy was right to use the riots as an opportunity to put this back on the agenda. A law that says a parent has smacked their child too hard if the skin reddens is crazy – my skin doesn’t even go red when I get a rash. For the law to say a black child can be beaten more than a white child is surely racist and wrong*.
If we have children that aren’t even afraid of the police, then how are words and naughty steps going to keep them on the straight and narrow?
Young people these days really know their rights. This is a good thing. But they also need to know and understand respect for the rights of parents and elders to discipline them too. I’m glad young people are hearing a debate about how we can control them a bit, rather than let them run free, for a change.
*this is a joke.
London Bridge, United Vibrations feat. Conrad the Scoundrel
The spirit of this song is crazy. Not angry, but a proactive and intense call to arms for young people. Admittedly, I’m not that young anymore but after listening to this, I felt like burning down London Bridge myself.
Roots Manuva – Let the Spirit
Classic.
A Very Belated Speech Debelle Speech Therapy Review
The buzz on twitter and a few music orientated sites is that Speech Debelle is back with her second album. Rearing her head up from the parapet with Blaze Up a Fire a collaboration with Realism and the legendary, Roots Manuva, and no doubt boosted by London 2012 reworking her track Spinnin’, Debelle’s new album Freedom of Speech hits the electronic shelves in February 2012.
Her Mercury Music Prize winning debut album should have been a one way ticket to the Graham Norton Show. Instead it was followed by poorly reviewed live shows, insignificant record sales of 10,000 and a spat with Big Dada.
Notwithstanding any of this, Speech’s success that day was my success too, I had some money on her at 11/1. Owing Speech a debt for that little win, I recently logged onto Amazon and became the 10,001st owner of an album that shows off the more thoughtful and musical side of British rap.
The BBC called this the ‘anti-hip hop’ album and I can see where they are coming from. I detect overwhelmingly live instrumentation, little use of drum machines and sampling and an amazing thread of acoustic guitar melodies that run through the whole record. I can’t recall hearing a clarinet on a rap record before but it’s all over the place here an it sounds calming and fresh. The brass backing of The Key, string arrangements in Go Then Bye and and the quiet hum of the backing singers in Better Days really make a record that’s a homage to Big Dada artists of past and a rejection of style over substance. Debelle raps like she’s talking to the music, not over it like most show off MCs, fighting to be heard over a beat.
Still, with no stand out singles in a world where the download is king, I can also understand why this record didn’t sell. Cheaply filmed videos, lack of cheap gimmicks (think silly hat, or homemade T-shirt) and no real party tunes, young urban audiences interested in ‘me against the world’/ ‘join in when you hear the chorus ‘ songs would not get this album.
It was a stand out album in 2009 because it genuinely stood out, the trend for music that year was Black Eye Peas, Flo Rida, Kings of Leon, Lady Gaga…kitsch and glam, big characters and big tunes. The opposite of Speech Therapy’s understated charm.
This record never deserved the backlash from indie/pop/rock ‘real’ music fans who wanted one of ’their’ artists to win the Mercury. Dizzee, Ms Dynamite and now Speech Debelle? I can imagine that to be galling for some. I’m convinced certain elements of this record buying demographic turned their back on an undoubtedly critically acclaimed piece because they took one look at a Black south London girl with a cornrows in a bomber jacket and leggings and said ‘no thank you’.
Two years ago we missed an opportunity to give an alternative look to the British urban music and open the doors to artists who add jazz and 90s soul to their music not for flavour, but for significant presence. Let’s hope when the new album comes out, we don’t do it again.
Things being in their place is of utmost importance
Chinua Achebe is the first the first published writer I read who leveled the reasonable proposition that Joseph Conrad was a bigot of the highest order, or, in his own words, ‘a thoroughgoing racist’. I have never read Heart of Darkness and I don’t feel the need to (if people call themselves ‘well read’ having never heard of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, I will call myself ‘well read’ without bothering with Conrad).
An Image of Africa, Achebe’s review of Heart of Darkness, is excellent. It was in this essay that I came across the statement, “For Conrad, things being in their place is of utmost importance.”
To explain, Achebe quotes from Conrad’s celebrated work:
“And between the whiles I had to look after the savage who was [a] fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind legs. A few months of training had done for that really fine chap”
Achebe shows that Conrad throughout his novel refers to people who are ‘in their place’ – namely Congolese citizens ‘stamping their feet and clapping their hands’ and, as shown above, the natives who he finds to be a little more lost. In witnessing a black person light a boiler his narrator finds confusion and Achebe finds evidence to support the deduction that for Conrad all things, and all people, have a place.
I remembered this because today, I read a throught provoking surmise of the problems George Lucas is having with Red Tails:
“Black Male War Heroes vs Black Men in Dresses”
This was a subtitle in the January 2011 Black History Walks newsletter
Red Tails, a movie now famously self funded by George Lucas (perhaps to make amends for Jar Jar Binks), features an all African-American cast of good looking young men. They are sat in the cockpits of airplanes in World War Two – a time when America fought against fascism but wouldn’t allow black people to ride in front of a bus. I remember in Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour, Cuba Gooding Jnr. was the cook. Now, he’s Top Gun.
Why did George Lucas, Hollywood don, struggle to get this made? The industry universally said it was ‘risky’ and for reasons unknown, it still cannot get a British distributor.
We know black movies aren’t seen as inherently risky by Hollywood. Think about the representation of black people in the following successful movies that studios can’t wait to invest money into:
Big Momma’s House 1,2, 3,4,5, 6…..
White Chicks
The Nutty Professor
And, how can I not mention The Help? *sigh*
Maybe the film industry thinks things being in their place is of utmost importance too.
There is more to emancipation than the opposition of racism -
“There is more to emancipation than the opposition of racism” Paul Gilroy
This is a quote that I found memorable because I see it’s truthfulness most days. It is especially evident in black footballers.
I only ever hear black footballers draw attention to their blackness when they are reminded of it by a racist. It is rarely a topic of conversation when they are interviewed or when they are seen to be charitable. It is rarely an identity asserted when talking about their pathways into professional sport.
I would argue the same goes for observers too. For them, the premiership is 25% black when there is a race furore. When there is none, it is simply 100% of everyone. Black footballers are footballers first, but so obviously black when treated differently (treated differently in public, that is).
Diversity was meant to be good to us. Multicultralism was meant to be the zenith of our ordeal. But there is nothing multicultural about our best paid professional footballers. White or black our footballers use the same language, have the same education, the same taste in cars, clothes, cuisine, and quite glaringly, women.
Nice. I bet they can't cook rice though.
You should never judge a book by it’s cover but if you show me your life partner, I’ll hazard a guess at your character. Spray tan, fake hair, trashy handbags, fake tits. A bit ropey looking. What do these women have that they want their children to inherit?
I think Paul Gilroy may dislike the entity that our footballers have become. Absorbed in anti-racism, they think people ‘seeing past their skin’ is enough. It’s a tragedy because they have learnt to see past their own skin too. A wealth of high achieving black figures in society doesn’t mean much to me if those figures don’t think anything of being ‘black’ in the first place.
To return to my earlier point.
I only ever hear black footballers draw attention to their blackness when they are reminded of it by a racist.
They rightly denounce racism at the point it is met, but never relish in pro-blackness at any other point of time. Cornrows and locs do not count.
Yesterday evening maybe a million men fell in love Thierry Henry all over again. He made those men ‘see past the colour his skin’. Louis Saha, due to his poor form, prompted at least one gentlemen to decide he had looked far enough.
This post is about anti-racism and how it does people of colour in Britain no good. By encouraging us to ignore race, we are being told to ignore ourselves. To get us to this stage within two generations is a victory for hegemony indeed. Our race is more than just skin. Our race is history, culture, victory, struggle, science, family, food, life…
I don’t want Louis Saha to tweet about a racist that calls him a n*****. Any black person that hasn’t been called a n***** on twitter hasn’t made their ethnicity obvious enough. I want him to tweet about the times he feels a bit of black, or cultural pride. When he remembers people who went through the physical abuse who he did not have to. When he wakes up and looks in the mirror and loves the colour that is staring back at him.
Oppose racism, yes. Fight ignorance – do it every day. But save some time to celebrate yourself too. If we don’t celebrate ourselves, no one else will.
I recently had a conversation with a friend who lamented the lack of Somali individuals in the public eye. I would advise her to be careful what she wishes for. For all the black footballers (not of Somali descent) cumulatively earning millions and being gifted combined audiences of many millions more, I don’t think we have made any progress. I think things have got worse.
Pardon me, brother, while you stand in your glory
I know you won’t mind if I tell the whole story
Pardon me, brother, I know we’ve come a long, long way
But let us not be so satisfied for tomorrow can be an
An even brighter day
It is not worthwhile going into the rights and wrongs of the recent race furors – other people have blogged so I don’t have to. What I do find interesting is the idea that the debates of the first week of 2012 may mean something to British society as a whole.
Matthew Ryder has written a piece in the Guardian today entitled, ‘The Lawrence case has at last made us confront the complex nature of racism’. It is subtitled, ‘Its legacy is profound and given us valuable new ways of thinking. We must not waste these insights’.
Seeing racism as complicated is not a ‘new way of thinking’. It is the way people with common sense, objectiveness and intelligence have always thought. It is only ‘new’ if you have been turning a blind eye to white privilege for the past five centuries. But it is very refreshing to see so many people open their minds to a more complex approach to the issue.
Racism is as innocent as simple as someone touching my hair without asking, or asking me which buses go to Peckham. It is a cutting as being told to ‘go home’ or being told frankly by a colleague from a small northern village “you won’t go down well where I come from.” Racism is not about whether or not the person is racist, it’s whether they do or say something that is clearly driven by a difference in race or ethnicity – harm intended or not. And if you are finally learning this, welcome to my world.
Welcome to my world if you posted tweets and Facebook statuses in memory of Stephen Lawrence and in praise of Doreen. Because I bet those were the first race-related updates you ever bothered to share with the world. Welcome if you were embarrassed by the indignation of many white people who thought they were victims of a racist attack last Thursday. And welcome if you scratched your head at Kenny Daglish’s vain attempts to stand by Suarez, even after he was found guilty.
Finally, intelligent debate about the nature of race and racism could be found amongst the usual reactionary drivel penned by white middle class commentators, complaining about political correctness and chips on shoulders.
Michal Rosen’s opinion piece hit the proverbial nail on the head:
http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/start-of-2012-seems-to-have-put-race-at.html?spref=tw
Common sense could be found here too:
http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2012/01/diane_abbott_ra?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
This intelligent debate mostly came from people who actually get listened to and more promisingly, it was actually read by people who perhaps haven’t already been converted.
For the first time in a long time, I’m starting to feel optimistic about the transition of intelligent racial debate from intellectual and anti-racism forums into a more popular arena.
And how do I know this change is slowly happening? Well, I posted a Facebook status update about David Starkey when he said black youth were leading white youth astray. And no one engaged in the debate with me. I plugged Duwayne Brook’s and Simon Hattenstone’s book Stephen and Me on Facebook when I read it last year, and no one took me up on the offer to read it.
On January 3 2012, my timelines were awash with everyone’s opinions on race relations in theUKtoday. My posts were liked and commented upon. My tweets were ‘RTed’. And it was a constant topic of conversation at work too.
This is not to dismiss the gigantic volume of misplaced opinion and derogatory name-calling that was unleashed on Twitter after Diane Abbott told ‘white people’ about themselves. It is to acknowledge that it is my hope, with regards to the conversation and recognition that Diane Abbott might have had a point, that we have started 2012 as we mean to go on. I would quite like Britain to see the racism that has been in front of its nose all along.
Michael Rosen Response to Diane Abbott-Gate
Lawrence, Suarez, Abbott – where are we?
The start of 2012 seems to have put ‘race’ at the top of its agenda. The slow and awful unfolding of the Stephen Lawrence case drew into its sphere the Suarez-Evra case from football and now the Diane Abbott tweet. One way I can make myself miserable is to read the comments on the Guardian’s Comment is Free forums. Good luck to people who can resist the temptation to go there or to comment.
Sway ft Lupe Fiasco Still Speedin’ Remix
Best UK rapper? Definitely most intelligent and mature and as commented on by a viewer ‘Does he have a 3rd lung?’
