I’m sorry, I just don’t feel it. It’s boring and really doesn’t move me at all - unlike the spacy, psychadelic-ish R&B Timbaland did in the late 90s, which is some of the greatest music I’ve ever heard in my life.

So, I’m in this Contemporary African-American Literature class and it turns out the “bent” of the class is going to be how capitalism and obsession with grandeur have taken over hip-hop, so the real cats who play the street’s CNN are unable to break through. Well, ostensibly this is what the class will be about, when we get to it. Today we just discussed poetry. Kicked it off w/ Paul Lawrence Dunbar and how his poetry that imitated southern slave dialect was the most popular, particularly among whites. Note that I said this was an imitation of southern slave dialect; Dunbar was from Ohio.

but back to my point: so our prof talks about Dunbar, and how his articulate stuff didn’t sell to white audiences, but his southern “dialect” shit did - whites searching for authenticity etc. Which makes sense to me.

But then he tries to draw a parallel to hip-hop, arguing that “the hood” is a modern, urban plantation, where the only black artists that will sell to whites are the ones who, similar to Dunbar, will speak their own “dialect” of inarticulate, uneducated music. Why can’t the smart guys get a break?

Which is such a bizarre argument to me. First of all, in my high school, it was the self-christened “intelligent” rap artists that all the white people liked - the Roots, Common, Black Star etc., and most of the black people I knew liked Cash Money, Master P etc. - most of the white people called that music “ghetto” and preferred “intelligent” black music. So part of my reaction is - man, this is like the bourgoise response to the poor blacks etc…ties into Bill Cosby elitism and all that.

So, I’m sitting in my chair stewing about this whole “articulate” music thing and then our teacher and some other students start discussing neo-soul - why can’t ‘intelligent’ artists like Jill Scott et al make it to the top of the charts? The assumption: whites don’t want to see intelligent blacks on TV.

I raise my hand and ask “what about Aaliyah?” and I’m met with responses that like - “she doesn’t write her own music, she was commercial” etc. I’m not sure what authorship has to do with anything, it’s all about the context that the listener recieves the song that matters. If Aaliyah’s music addresses with themes that are just as “complex” as Jill Scott’s, then whether or not she wrote those words herself is irrelevent - it’s the listener’s context that matters.

So after being dismissed so out-of-hand and feeling unable to defend Aaliyah the way I should I brought up Missy Elliott - and I’m met with the accusation that she occasionally leans towards “minstrelsy” which is a new one to me. Andre 3000 MAYbe leans that way, but Missy?! Also my prof argues that she seems entirely asexual to him, and for a time he thought she was a lesbian. At this point my mind is blown and I’m not really sure what to say.

Basically - is Jill Scott unable to make a hit because she’s smarter than your average popular black popular artist, or is she unable to have a hit because she SUCKS?! I’m going to go with the latter - why can’t Mos Def have a hit? Well, for one thing he was on Rawkus the last time he released an album and certainly wasn’t getting some ridiculous distro and exposure. And for another thing, he just hasn’t been recording. Talib Kweli DID get a big hit, and it was because he recorded a song that DESERVED to be a hit! (”Get By”)

Anyway, Neo-Soul is boring music, not intelligent music, and I don’t care what college Jill Scott went to, nor do I understand what makes her smarter than Aaliyah; but I do know that Aaliyah makes me feel something as an artists and that ultimately that’s why she connected with so many people - black people included, judging by her popularity at my high school. It certainly wasn’t the white kids who walked down the halls all “baby girl…can y’all really feel me.” Feel me?