the Teena Marie episode of unsung debuted tonight. the episode was really good. I was wondering how she linked with rick james, so that was clarified in the doc and it was interesting to see how that relationship unfolded (I won’t spoil it for you–cuz you know it’s gonna be on again).

HOWEVER, at this point i have come to expect unsung to point out the special songs that the profiled artist had during his/her career. i waited and waited and waited for them to mention deja vu, but no such mention ever came (they also said nothing of portuguese love, which surprised me, but didn’t bother me at all).

maybe it’s just me, but i expected them to talk about deja vu not just because it was such a special, beautiful song, but because i think that song really spoke to Teena’s cross-cultural appeal. plus, rick james wrote it — and with how much they discussed the whole rick james-teena marie saga i just knew they were going to play that song!

anyway, i might one of like three people on earth who care that the song went unmentioned (i mean, it wasn’t exactly a chart-topper), but i care. i think it’s her best song ever.

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push

Push by Sapphire is one of my absolute favorite novels. Now it has been transformed into a film called Precious. This makes me nervous because movies usually do books no justice and taint your view of the story.

Apparently, Sapphire had the same reservations. Not sure how I feel about this. I guess I need some time to let it marinate in my mind.

I will say that I’m glad Sapphire is getting the recognition she deserves for writing such an amazing book. I still don’t think I’m going to go see the film, though. I’ll probably just spend that time rediscovering the book (since it’s been about eight years since I last read it).

Anyway, here’s a good article I found about the book.

4coloredgirls

I decided to do a series of blog entries about the mixtape. I’m starting with F.C.G. (Black Gurl Song).

I wrote this song two years ago after really paying attention to Ntozake Shange’s Choreopoem, ‘For Colored Girls’ (So obviously FCG stands for For Colored Girls). I was particularly inspired by the part where she says “Somebody, anybody, sing a black girl song. Bring her out to know herself.” I was like that’s so true!And that’s how I feel. Within current music, esp. hip-hop, I feel like you NEVER hear black girl songs anymore. I’m talking about a real black girl perspective – not what we think other people want to hear, or trying to become men in skirts, basically, but REAL black girl’s songs and black girl’s stories (what we go through and how we feel). So I wanted to just express that and implore the world to “sing a black girl song” because they are getting our stories ALL WRONG.

Anyway, the lyrics are below (click the title of this post to continue reading).

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