Category: Entertainment

Meet Shenseea, the Singer Who’s Causing a Stir in the Dancehall Community

Originally published for Teen Vogue.

It’s a rainy day in Soho, and Miss Lily’s is filled to the brim — both with people and decor, described by the owners as inspired by “West Indian diaspora.” The vibrant interior of the venue features checkered floors vinyl booths throughout, and walls affixed with a bevy album covers spanning “50 years of Jamaican music history.”

No chronicling of Jamaican popular music would be accurate without including dancehall — a genre that originated in the late 70s in Kingston as a shift from reggae into physical dance halls: spaces for large numbers of the working-class population to hear music via portable sound systems, that would evolve and change with technology and artistic needs in the genre. The early class of dancehall stars includes legends such as Yellowman and the oft-sampled Sister Nancy; the musical style would expand from a niche to a national staple by the 1990s, crossing over to US markets courtesy of Jamaican diasporas, and ultimately taking the charts by storm: Beenie Man, Buju Banton, Lady Saw, and Sean Paul all became household names to anyone who watched MTV.

Making her own mark in said history is singer, DJ, and singjay, Shenseea (pronounced ˈs(H)en,ˈsee,ˈēə) born Chinsea Lee, arriving at Miss Lily’s in all white. After premiering her first single with Interscope Records, “Blessed,” she simply asked one question: “Is it a vibe?” The answer in the room was a resounding “yes” — but more importantly, so was the case from her fans — the music video received over 2 million hits in just under two days, a wildly enthusiastic response from her #ShenYeng fanbase and just a sign of things to come.

In the months since the release, Shenseea’s single has made waves in the American music scene, peaking at Number 2 on Billboard’s Reggae digital sales chart and getting the eye of chart-topping crossover stars such as Cardi B. The distinctive opening trills of the song – Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat, ah – have become lovingly mimicked by fans. If the initial reception is any harbinger of things to come, Shenseea truly is blessed and quickly rising to the occasion.

“At the moment, I’m trying to infuse my dancehall genre with pop music, but at the same time I cannot do it straight,” she tells Teen Vogue about blending her Jamaican patois with mainstream American lyricism.“So what I’m trying to do is … I still have my tone of voice and everything, but just try to change a majority of the lines, of the words, and how I express certain things that I want to say, just so you guys can understand even more.”

The language hurdle is a delicate balance that she has taken great pains to identify in her music. “I still don’t want to leave my home genre, hence why I try to mix them as much as possible,” cheekily pointing out “and I’m literally from the Caribbean so I don’t see it as a crime.”

There was also a mixed reaction over the opening scene of the “Blessed” video (directed by Riveting Entertainment, who also worked on Tyga’s “Taste” and Chris Brown’s “Party”), which panned to a vista of her in bed with another woman – prompting discussion of Shenseea’s sexual identity. When asked about the nature of the scene, she slyly demurred on social media, “it’s my friend and we just came home from a party — remember, best friends have sleepovers too … just for her safety she slept over.”

It’s an interesting moment for Shenseea to find herself in, as Jamaica and dancehall have established a hypervisible reputation for having issues with the LGBTQ community. There has been increasing work toward carving out inclusive spaces within dancehall with organizations such as WE Change Jamaica, J-FLAG, and CONNEK. And over the last two decades, the conversation has evolved with key moments like Beenie Man, the “King of the Dancehall,” apologizing for homophobic lyrics in 2016. This year, Buju Banton, who, not long after his release from prison, put out a statement expressing his remorse for releasing his infamous homophobic “Boom Bye Bye” song, and declaring that it would not be available for streaming or purchase.

On Shenseea’s end, she previously declared her open support to the LGBTQ community during 2018 pride to her follower base on Instagram of 1.7 million. And her recent highly-circulated move on “Blessed” has received the qualified co-sign of Jaevion Nelson, the executive director of J-FLAG, on Facebook.

As we spoke while she was preparing for BET Awards weekend, she remained undeterred. “I’m not trying to emulate anyone’s trajectory,” she says, opting to be a trailblazer of her own. Sheensea sees herself as apart of how the new crossover dancehall sound should be defined from an authentic Jamaican perspective, as opposed to the various white artists that have entered the space in the American markets.

She has good reason to feel that way: At just 22 years old, the Kingston native and young mother of Afro-Carribean and Korean descent who first started singing in the church has grown from a club promoter and bottle service girl to the unofficial “Princess of Dancehall.” (the current Queen of dancehall title has been reserved for Spice, a trailblazing artist in her own right). Having left college for financial reasons, she gained an early following on Facebook, singing original songs and covers with a heavy reggae inflection akin to Tanya Stephens, before veering into a more appealing dancehall sound.

“When I heard my first song (“Jiggle Jiggle”) play for the first time, I was still doing promotional work,” she says. Since then, she has gone on to score major hits, from the breakout collaboration with the currently-incarcerated dancehall star Vybz Kartel (who she has identified as a lyrical influence), “Loodi,” to the bawdy and booming “ShenYeng Anthem.”

Punctuated throughout the videos for all of her biggest hits is a consistent love for her home country of Jamaica — treatments are lush displays of color and diverse groups of women in various positions of power. The official clip for “Blessed,” as an example, has no major appearance from any men save for the artist featured. No matter the scenario, as she has expanded her sphere of influence, she has ensured that she has put out visuals where women control the narrative — even when singing about submissive sex — but it doesn’t render them immune from criticism: The video for ShenYeng Anthem, for example, received a fair amount of pushback for the intermingled Asian imagery and yellowface deemed offensive. To this charge, she never responded.

But firmly putting out triumph after triumph at a rapid clip in the dancehall music scene gained her a solid fan base not just in Jamaica, but in cities with large Caribbean diasporas such as New York, Toronto, and London. Just two days prior to her single debut at Miss Lily’s, Shenseea performed to a packed crowd at Queens NY’s Amazura Nightclub in Jamaica — a popular stomping ground for artists such as Mavado and Aidonia — just as she had done the year before.

In July, however, she would make her return to Queens – but to perform at MoMA P.S. 1’s The Warm Up Series alongside artists such as Smino and Boogie, a distinctly different audience than her usual stomping grounds, and her first big outing as part of the Interscope family, following a number of show cancellations due to vocal cord trauma, which has caused her continuous frustration. “I really do not know to expect,” she admitted, “but I’m ready for it. I’m just going to go out there, do my best and interact with my people as I normally do.”

This image may contain Human Person Festival Crowd Stage Footwear Shoe Clothing Apparel and Leisure Activities
AREN JOHNSON

The day of the actual performance was, literally, one for the record books: with a heat index that was slated to go as high as 111 degrees, several events were canceled throughout the city, including OZY Fest and Triathlon. But for Shenseea, the show must go on – a 30-minute set to formally introduce her past, present, and future sound to the world, to a completely new crowd.

True to form, she delivered, triumphantly strutting out onto the Long Island City stage in a silver iridescent jacket, lime green thigh-high boots bustier, and cutoff shorts performing her dancehall anthem. By the time she would return to the song later in the set, her jacket and shoes were off, and she was passing the mic back and forth with the ShenYeng fanbase, who were ardently singing along: “nuh fight over man / mi nuh stress over yute / some gyal head full a air like parachute,” an ode to not letting the man ever be the prize or getting wrapped up in fights with women who insist on thinking that way.

The set had a bevy of other peaks as well: a strong and sultry rendition of Bob Marley’s “Is This Love” transitioned to a custom remix of her own, and the “Applause Riddim,” most famously used for Sean Paul’s 2006 hit single “Temperature,” blared through the speakers, while Shenseea comfortably exercised her underutilized rap freestyling skills.

By the time that she closed with “Blessed”, her opening words on stage, “my name is Shenseea from Kingston, Jamaica!” were ingrained in the heads of anyone in the audience who had yet to be introduced to her.

When it comes to new music, while an album is reportedly dropping in the fall, her fans, antsy for content, are unused to the traditional Western single rollout and are chomping at the bit for more music – and while she is currently focused on the bigger picture, Shenseea never plans on forgetting her original fanbase, saying; “I’m gonna release one more song just for the dancehall culture.”

In this new wave of attention to dancehall, Shenseea, more so than her peers, seems to not only be aware of the power of social media but has also worked to organically harness that power and momentum in a way that can create a flashpoint moment out of her next teaser on Instagram. It’s a relationship that has occasionally worked to her detriment, but currently, the future is looking bright.

Back in the green room after her performance, Shenseea is relaxed in a chair, surrounded by her close friends and longtime team. “It was good, right?” she asks, pleased with the results despite some intermittent technical issues with the microphones. She laughs, “I think [the heat was] just an excuse for people to drop their clothes.”

As for what Shenseea wants people to know? “I am coming. Even if they can’t pronounce the name or remember, they will remember quite soon enough. I said that when I was just coming on the scene — the first time I started doing music, nobody could pronounce my name properly. And what I told them is still valid — it will roll off your tongue quite soon, don’t worry. And so said, so done. Now everybody’s saying Shenseea.”

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What Big Little Lies Got Wrong About Bonnie

Originally published for The Atlantic.

“You are out here surrounded by people who don’t get you. They don’t look like you. I haven’t even seen one other black person since I’ve been out here.”

This statement from the character Elizabeth Howard (Crystal Fox) to her daughter Bonnie Carlson, on Episode 2 of Big Little Lies’ second season, seemed to be the show’s tacit acknowledgment of its glaring, first-season blind spot. The series’ failure to introduce any story lines confronting Bonnie’s experience as a young black woman in a high-strung, predominantly white environment was as pronounced as the show’s commitment to a lush display of California seascapes. Zoë Kravitz, who plays Bonnie, shared her frustration, saying to Rolling Stone, “I tried to get a little more … [race] put into Big Little Lies … but people are scared to go there. If we’re making art and trying to dissect the human condition, let’s really do that.”

Big Little Lies introduces Bonnie as the second wife of Madeline’s (Reese Witherspoon) ex-husband. Bonnie’s youth and contemporary flair are an easy target for Madeline, and though Bonnie is a fellow mother at Otter Bay Elementary School, she is fairly distant from the banalities that consume the parenting community of Monterey. Her appearances during Season 1 mainly come into relevance via her profession as a yoga teacher, which serves to characterize her as a paragon of contemporary progressive ideals. As the Vulture critic Angelica Jade Bastién pointed out: Despite a strong performance from Kravitz, absent any real grounding to her story, Bonnie is relegated to the Carefree Black Girl archetype that merely serves as a foil to the other women.

Season 1’s choice to divorce Bonnie from any significant backstory was not just a disservice to Kravitz; it also ran afoul of the source material itself. The novel on which the series is based characterizes Bonnie as being motivated to kill the antagonist Perry (played by Alexander Skarsgård) because she’d experienced violence in her home growing up. But lacking this context, and considering that significant stretches of the season played out with Bonnie in the periphery, her actions on the night of Perry’s death felt rather abrupt. That culminating scene didn’t lend itself to the novel’s intended effect of showing the sisterhood that forms in the midst of trauma. (The director Jean-Marc Vallée defended this creative decision, saying, “To give [the killing] a reason and justify that because she was abused and had a thing against men, it’s not about that.”)

With the launch of Season 2, there seemed to be an active effort to course-correct: While Meryl Streep’s addition to the cast was the highly anticipated main draw, Bonnie’s character was also given a larger presence. The show’s creator, David E. Kelley, admitted, “There was so much more to tell with the characters, especially with Bonnie. We only hinted about who Bonnie was. We had not mined where she came from and what led to the big push at the end of year one.”

This season has unfolded unevenly, however, with slow plot development that has made it difficult to tell how much substantive change has truly taken place. The episodes start with a significant amount of hand-wringing over the women’s decision not to tell the truth about the incident—a decision that is hitting Bonnie the hardest, much to the rest of the group’s confusion. In a discussion with Madeline, Bonnie explains that despite the collectiveness of the secret, she is the only one who carries the burden of actually killing Perry.

It’s clear that Bonnie still feels removed from her peers, yet her reasoning for feeling this way is fairly unexamined. The show fumbles an opportunity to explore the implications of a black woman coming forward and admitting to killing an influential white businessman, the fact that black women may not be believed in these situations, and even the nuance of the detective who is doggedly pursuing the group being another black woman.Big Little Lies vaguely implies that Bonnie’s distance is self-inflicted, and it offers no real indictment of the other women’s lack of awareness. There might be no clearer reflection of that than in the penultimate episode of the season, in which Madeline brashly says to Bonnie in a moment of frustration, “I’m so tired of taking care of you and your fucking feelings.”

Part of the reason Bonnie still seems underdeveloped as a character may be due to the alleged significant revisions made in postproduction, after the Season 2 director Andrea Arnold’s creative control was said to be lessened to make more use of Vallée’s first-season style. The most complex dynamic for Bonnie this season is between her and Elizabeth, whom the show turned into the abusive parent, as opposed to Bonnie’s white father (a creative choice noted by some critics as playing into lazy tropes). At best, the change certainly waded into demystifying black maternal dynamics. But it did so frivolously, without actually delving into cyclical trauma and how Bonnie’s upbringing would affect her raising her own black daughter.

The revelation of Elizabeth’s abuse of Bonnie via flashbacks is detached from the other focal arcs of the season. Bonnie reconciling her trauma is an experience that she largely goes through alone, despite having a preexisting bond with Celeste (Nicole Kidman), who knows well the complexities of domestic violence and the guilt that comes with being victimized repeatedly. Bonnie’s moment of catharsis happens in solitude, away from the group, as she sits by Elizabeth’s side in a hospital room:

“I resent you. For the childhood that I had. I resent you for your impatience. For being scared of doing my homework without being yelled at. For all the kitchen cabinet doors you slammed. For slapping me. For all the bruises. I resent you for not feeling safe at home. I resent you for being ashamed of me. I resent you for all the sex I started to have when I was 13 to prove to myself that I could be loved. I resent you for my wanting to beat the shit out of everyone. I resent you for making me feel so fucking worthless that I settled for a man that I don’t … But mainly, I resent you for killing a man. I killed Celeste’s husband. He didn’t slip. I pushed him. I snapped—and when I lunged at him, I was pushing you. And that push was a long time coming. And I want to forgive you.”

It’s a peculiar narrative decision: Absent Bonnie’s true integration with the rest of the ensemble, the speech has less significance as a moment of emancipation and registers as a rushed, unearned exposition. For a show that does an otherwise thorough job of peeling apart the layers of various women’s dynamics—Madeline’s attempt to steady herself after feeling unmoored in her marriage is deftly examined—Big Little Lies disappoints with Kravitz’s character. While Bonnie certainly has more background this time around, she isn’t given the depth of interrogation necessary to answer some of the larger questions surrounding her presence in the show.

The culminating conflict of the season focused on Celeste and her mother-in-law (Streep). Echoing Season 1, the conclusion minimized Bonnie, who was such a fundamental part in the events that prompted this face-off. Her arc—including coming to terms with her abusive mother—played out largely in isolation, making the group’s final reunification feel, again, sudden. It seems that the “people who don’t get you” whom Elizabeth referred to doesn’t just apply to the other characters of Monterey, but to the Big Little Lies writer’s room as well.

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On Lena Waithe and the Danger of Pinning Your Creative Authenticity to Your Activism

Originally published for VerySmartBrothas.

When it was announced that rising actor Jason Mitchell—known for his performances in Straight Outta Compton, Mudbound and The Chi—had not only been released from his contract as a series regular on The Chi but was removed from an upcoming Netflix film (and dropped by his agent and manager), the initial response was a consensus: For him to get shunned by the industry this swiftly, whatever offenses he’s accused of must have been beyond the pale.

Even more surprising was that many of the alleged offenses happened on the set of The Chi, the brainchild of self-professed Time’s Up activist Lena Waithe, who hasgone on record stating “If you want to play that game and be disrespectful or misbehave on set with an actress or anyone, I’ll happily call Showtime and say this person has to go, and you will get shot up and it’ll be a wonderful finale.”

As we now know, the forcefulness of her language belies the truth of what happened on set. Tiffany Boone, who played Mitchell’s character’s girlfriend Jerrika, endured harassment for the first two seasons of the show to the point that her fiancé had to come on set whenever she shot scenes with Mitchell. And at least one other actress filed complaints—as well as Ayanna Floyd Davis, the showrunner for season two. It took 10 days, however, for Waithe herself to speak on the record about the accusations and fallout—choosing the platform of a 40-minute phone interview with Charlamagne Tha God on The Breakfast Club.

It comes off as a curiously intentional decision when you consider that in the window between the public discovery about Mitchell and her one-on-one with Charlamagne, Waithe guest hosted an episode an of Jimmy Kimmel Live, replete with a viral kiss with Halle Berry, with nary a mention of the crisis existing on the set of her show.

Despite work by multiple organizations and public figures to get the harassment of black women covered on a national scale and Waithe’s own self-avowed affiliation with national organizations with Hollywood ties, when it came time to address issues within her own purview, it became an “in-house” discussion. And one with a moderator who has had his own problematic past with black women.

In The Breakfast Club interview, when asked about the measures she took upon being made aware that Boone endured harassment in the first season, Waithe stressed that she took action by placing women of color in positions of power, a tactic that would seem to only expose more women to Mitchell’s alleged abuse. (And in hindsight did, considering Davis filed complaints of her own.)

Placing figureheads as a countermeasure isn’t a controlling agent for behavior nor is it accountability—it’s a toothless symbolism without any reasonable expectation of change. These certainly aren’t recommended practices (pdf) in the Leading With Transparency guidelines provided by the Time’s Up organization on navigating sexual harassment in the workplace. Given the pile of quicksand Davis walked into, it’s no wonder she was unable to stem the chronic harassment from recurring and even being directed her way, a point Waithe seemed to omit when discussing her regrets of “trusting someone else to do my job.”

When it comes to the matter of Waithe’s job within the universe of The Chi and in the activist-minded cultural space she simultaneously wants to inhabit, there are some blatant contradictions—seemingly borne out of a desire to exist both in the world of the haves and the have nots. In the same breath that we are informed she ensured that the season two staff was helmed by black women, she insisted that despite being the creator and executive producer with multiple writing credits and an Emmy to her name, she didn’t have much influence in the firing decisions—a sentiment she reiterates at the 15:30 mark of the video, when defending her choice to allow Boone to leave as opposed to lobbying for Mitchell’s departure: “I’m not in control over who really stays or who goes in the show…the truth is, there’s a world in which I can say it’s me or Jason, and they may take Jason.”

It’s an incongruous juxtaposition that recurs throughout the conversation, rendering it difficult to parse through the true nature of Waithe’s position. Starting at 6:25, for example, there’s a protracted discussion in which she proudly establishes herself as both being regularly on set on her shows, making sure it is a safe space for women during sensitive moments, before adjusting her position around 8:45 to that of a boss with too many employees to manage all of the comings and goings and needing to delegate it out to trusted individuals.

In regard to Boone’s season two return, the initial disclosure was that by the time Waithe was made privy to the situation, both Boone and Mitchell had come to an agreement and were willing to work together again, only for Waithe to mention that she sat with Boone and implored her to “give me an opportunity to change your environment.” This act seems innocuous on its face, but adjusts the level of involvement she purportedly has. These statements were made one right after the other—13:35 minutes in—making it difficult to comprehend exactly what Waithe knew and when.

To date, we still don’t know the specifics of all the allegations against Mitchell—Waithe alleges not to know them herself—and they are frankly irrelevant. While the specifics will certainly leak in due time, if Mitchell did create an unsafe working environment for several women, many of them black, that is reason enough to hold him accountable immediately.

For Lena, the palpable disappointment of many of her fans lies in the fact that she seems to be incapable of divorcing her need to protect her brand as an advocate and champion for the marginalized from providing clear accountability on the failures that endangered multiple women on the show. When she had her own opportunity to “lead with transparency,” she instead chose to sidestep, displacing as much blame as possible to another woman—who also endured harassment—while also subtly victim-blaming as justification for her failure to act in a truly productive manner.

In a piece I wrote a while ago on cancel culture and public apologies, linguist Edwin Battistella explained how the initial apologies are almost always guided by self-interest, stating “people who want to see if they can get away with a lesser offense; if they can sort of say ‘I was misunderstood’ or ‘I was just kidding’ or ‘This is a private matter, let’s move on,’ and if people accept those sorts of apologies that just kind of encourages more of that. So it’s good when groups and individuals push back and say ‘This isn’t the apology we were hoping to see. This apology says nothing.’”

In many ways, this describes what is playing out with Waithe now. In expecting her identity and political capital to bolster her through this PR moment, she forgot that her political capital is tied to whether or not she truly upholds the rubric of the moral fabric that she claims to stand behind. This incident was a failure in that regard—an exercise in extemporaneous self-defense as opposed to empathy and clarity.

Near the end of The Breakfast Club interview, Waithe states to Charlamagne, “Hollywood needs to be a safe space for black women and I think we all need to do better about that.” The sentiment is a beautifully worded logical fallacy, pointing the finger back at the world before allowing anyone to hold her accountable for her clear failings as the name and advocate behind this project. It would truly be unfortunate if that in all the women Lena failed here, the last one would be herself.

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The Diaspora Wars of ‘She’s Gotta Have It’

Originally published in OkayAfrica.

British actors are “taking all of our roles” says Nola Darling to Olu, her British-Nigerian love interest in the latest season of She’s Gotta Have It (#SuperFunkyCaliFragiSexy). “We have dope, talented, trained, qualified, black actors right here in the States—and at the end of the day, Black Brits just come cheaper,” she continues, echoing Samuel L. Jackson’s real-life commentary on the subject.

In response, Olu argues that Black Brits are “free of the psychological burden” of slavery and Jim Crow, prompting Nola to inform him that he “just [has] Stockholm Syndrome and fell in love with your captors”—but not before explaining the basic facts of British involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade.

The backlash from the Black Diaspora in the United Kingdom was swift: Nola Darling’s sentiments were an insult to the experience of Black Brits. While a fictional character’s problematic views don’t necessarily reflect their creator’s feelings, when taken to task for the clip on Instagram, Spike Lee responded with a brusque “Truth Hurts?”.

The scene frames the British character as the villain in the interaction—”how can someone so gorgeous be so ignorant?” Nola asks. It’s an odd premise considering recent political history in the UK. Events like the fire at the Grenfell Towers, the Windrush generation scandal, and the ongoing Brexit debacle are all clear indicators that the modern Britain, like the US, has not shaken free of its white supremacist foundations. And why would Black Brits be “unburdened” by slavery when a large proportion also descended from chattel slavery? Given this clear misrepresentation, it’s understandable why someone like John Boyega would push back. In the exchange between Nola and Olu who is truly the ignorant one?

In a review for the initial season of She’s Gotta Have It, writer Zoe Samudzi criticized the show’s inauthentic feel and stilted dialogue, noting that “the result is an inorganic character constantly uttering strained, overly witty Gilmore Girls-esque banter…who feels detached from actual experience and conversation, living in a purgatory between 1986 and now.” In a series that strove to recapture the boldness of the original film’s perspective of modern Black women’s sexuality and life in Brooklyn, it fell short in both accords, settling instead for a paint-by-numbers plot update tethered to a facsimile of the original story, anchored with overwrought vocabulary that lacks the cadence of a genuine conversation between peers.

Season 2 continues on that note, unbound by the parameters of the original source material—resulting in a chaotic string of episodes composed of curious extended asides and plot contrivances used to make unwieldy points on gentrification, queer relationships, artistic expression and exploitation, self love, classism, and Black diaspora relations. With the latter, Lee tackles the subject with the precision of a sledgehammer.

Unfortunately Nola and Olu’s tête-à-tête derails any opportunity to properly examine the ability of Black British actors to take on and do justice to roles for Black Americans. The controversy flared recently with the backlash to Cynthia Erivo’s casting as Harriet Tubman and Samuel L. Jackson’s comments on casting patterns in which he inaccurately described Britain’s relationship with interracial dating. These nuances should be explored—but without projecting other groups’ experiences, or using language akin to xenophobic tropes.

There are multiple threads at play. Hollywood remains the West’s largest film industry with significantly more roles available for Black actors, prompting more Black Brits to cross the pond; and with the United Kingdom education system investing in arts training at a rate that far exceeds the scope of the States, casting agents are known to openly fetishize the “pedigree” of the British imports. This tends to come at a higher cost to Black Americans due to the more limited availability of top-billing roles intended specifically for Black actors.

All of this manufactured scarcity is, of course, due largely to white production companies and various other gatekeepers. As we work to build our own platforms and tell our own stories, it’s prudent to explore what equity in representation looks like in race-based casting and how we can work to expand the pool of available significant positions for Black people in the film industry on either side of the Atlantic and on either side of the camera.

It was especially jarring that Nola and Olu’s argument was further undercut by choosing to mispronounce the names of Chiwetel Ejiofor and John Boyega, an anti-black trope, and turning Olu into an incoherent mishmash of West African identities—a British Nigerian with a Yoruba name claiming the Fulani tribe while casually donning Ghanaian Kente regalia.

In an ironic twist, Nola’s character searches for clarity by tapping into Yoruba spirituality during a trip to Puerto Rico, failing to acknowledge the sources that she was previously so dismissive of. She is identified as a daughter of Oshun (an orisha made globally infamous after Beyoncé’s interpolation of Yoruba iconography in Lemonade).

The present-day African diaspora is more connected than ever, and nowhere is that more evident than modern-day Brooklyn, home to a large Caribbean population, the West Indian Day Parade, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) and other Black cultural institutions. This past Memorial Day Weekend, the streets of Spike Lee’s beloved Fort Greene were littered with BAM’s annual celebration of African Identity, creative expression, and performance, DanceAfrica, as well as newly established diaspora traditions like Everyday Afrique. By failing to recognize the rhythms of the borough, Lee reveals just how removed he is from the particulars of the experiences of day-to-day Black Brooklyn life, and he is only doing himself and the show a disservice by allowing the show to be dominated by his voice and direction.

As Black creatives continue to tell the stories that we find important, their impacts and themes tend to resonate broadly. It’s why Roots was a phenomenon that aired not just in the US but in Europe, and the story of the Haitian Revolution is universally recalled as one of Black self-determination and insurrection. That extends to marketing: BlacKkKlansman, for example, was an American story that Lee made efforts to connect with Black British audiences, similar in logic to the targeted global campaign that Marvel engaged in for Black Panther.

Engaging in the labor of storytelling is not a tradition of exclusivity; it’s one of exchange and collaboration, as long as all parties arriving at the table have entered into a safe space of mutual respect and understanding. It’s a loss for us all when a new piece of Black work fails to understand that framework.

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What Ramy Gets Wrong About Muslim Women

Originally published for The Atlantic.

This article contains spoilers throughout Season 1 of Ramy.Hulu’s new series Ramy depicts a fictionalized version of the life of its star and co-creator, Ramy Youssef (named Ramy Hassan on the show), a Millennial Egyptian American from a robust North Jersey Muslim community. Along with the co-creators Ari Katcher and Ryan Welch, Youssef explores the complexities of being a religious man from an immigrant family with wry humor and a dash of surrealism. Continue reading →
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In Defense of Cancel Culture

Originally published for Broadly as part of my “Extremely Online” monthly column.

When comedian Jess Hilarious (born Jessica Moore) received backlash on her fearful reaction to four Sikh people boarding her flight, her initial response was dismissive: “If I’m scared, I’m scared. Fuck y’all. Fuck how y’all feel.” To the thousands of people who watched, the fear she felt was irrelevant—responding with accusing her of being xenophobic, Islamophobic, “ignorant,” and insensitive to an already marginalized group of approximately 500,000 people domestically.

Shortly after, as the displeasure from her fan base mounted, Jess returned to her Instagram account where she built her fanbase of 4.4 million followers and provided a tearful four-minute apology. The comedian acknowledged the harm in her racial profiling and asking her fans to “bear with me, I’m still growing” and that she “didn’t understand the power that [she] had,” committing to donate $15K to the families of victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings, and sharing the link for her fans to donate as well.

Understandably, there are people who question Moore’s attempt to make amends; given that her initial response was so disparaging, a logical conclusion would be that the plaintiveness behind her latest effort was a matter of self preservation. Fear is a large motivator, especially in the entertainment industry, where the 24-hour news cycle can follow with losing opportunities and further support—commonly colloquialized as being “canceled”—as opposed to true remorse and accountability for the harms committed.

Rationale aside, however, how did Jess get this initial response so wrong in the first place?

“Part of her misstep was failing to realize that part of why she has had recent success is, in part, the result of an allied effort to support Black and WOC comedians by Black women and Black queers,” communications strategist Camonghne Felix tells Broadly. “Those folks are largely anti-homophobia and anti-Islamophobia—and that belief system dictates who they support.”

The moral rubrics that celebrities and public figures are bound to remain in good standing when they correlate to the target audience that is the lynchpin of their support. That may align with a proper code of ethics, but not always: Several PR strategists note President Donald Trump’s ability to inoculate himself from being rebuked for his repeated immoralities show that his target base strongly supports him despite national disapproval ratings staying relatively steady at around 50 percent. A “cancelation” by any aggrieved group is, in essence, largely a calculus of diminishing returns of a public figure’s goodwill to the community that they are beholden to.

Linguist and author of Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology Edwin Battistella believes that the reason initial apologies for offensive actions fall short, are largely guided by the margins of self-interest: “It’s hard for people to get it right on the first try” he tells Broadly.. “In part it’s people who want to see if they can get away with a lesser offense; if they can sort of say ‘I was misunderstood’ or ‘I was just kidding’ or ‘This is a private matter, let’s move on,’ and if people accept those sorts of apologies that just kind of encourages more of that. So it’s good when groups and individuals push back and say ‘This isn’t the apology we were hoping to see. This apology says nothing.’”

This act of public shaming can seem overwrought at times, especially in the social-media driven news cycle in which scandals change monthly, if not weekly. But in an online space that can be increasingly dictated by active fan bases who create avenues for these figures to move past the bruise to their own political capital, without truly confronting the value systems of the people whose support they rely on, it remains an effective tool. Without this construct, for example, it is conceivable that Kevin Hart’s end-run campaign to return as an Oscars host—after old homophobic tweets were resurrected—by proxy absolution from his celebrity friends, may have worked. As Felix notes, “cancellation isn’t personal but a way for marginalized communities to publicly assert their value systems through pop culture.”

Considering the valid skepticism of the hollow apology statements, what are the key elements evoking authenticity?

“[The person] has to really name the harm that was done,” Battistella points out. “The person has to say what they did wrong and why it’s wrong. The other thing is it needs to say what’s going to be different in the future…with celebrities you don’t see them really doing that, and if you do it’s a short-term thing.”

Take the example of Doja Cat, who continuously failed to grasp the ethics of where she had erred when it was exposed that she had repeatedly used homophobic slurs on social media years before she become a recognized artist. The 23-year-old initially attempted to clear her name and assert her moral standing while repeatedly using the harmful slur in context. When that inevitably backfired, she regrouped and returned with a statement that was better, but still used distancing language: “I’m sorry for anyone I’ve offended.” By the time she landed on syntax that was concise, sincere, and held accountability without excusing herself, there were already diminishing returns due to the series of unforced errors prompted by her inability to reconcile why her fanbase was challenging her.

“Rounds of apologies fail because rarely do they address an understanding of value systems,” Felix explains. “Saying ‘I’m sorry I said this, I promise I’m not racist’ makes no sense to us because we know that saying something racist makes you racist. Apologies that acknowledge structural discrimination and a commitment to unlearning racism, homophobia, etc. do better because it highlights systems, which is what we are all actually fighting against.”

To that end, when your brand becomes indelibly tied to apologies, such as Lena Dunham, the routine of putting out a new set of regrets starts to seem increasingly performative and indicative of a lack of growth alongside the belief systems of their target demographics.

The other end of the spectrum is just as undesirable, as Battistella points out: “Do you remember the whole John Wayne movie line, ‘Never apologize, it’s a sign of weakness?’” he asks. “In the movie they were actually using it kind of ironically, but I think people have taken that literally—and now [some] people feel like if you do something wrong and you’re held accountable for it by others, it’s somehow insulting or a sign of their own victimhood.”

What’s important to consider is that these social media callouts are, often, the only space for the general public to hold public figures accountable—but even then, that authority is finite. As PR sources point out, the “canceled” are always allowed re-entry into their respective niches in due time (read: Aziz Ansari), with the timeline dependent on the grievousness of the allegations, industry standards, expectations, and societal rhythms. One doesn’t need to look any further than Mel Gibson’s nomination for Best Director and attendance at the 2017 Academy Awards, years after his leaked anti-Semitic rant during a 2006 DUI arrest and subsequent abusive and racist voicemail to his ex-girlfriend, as proof positive of this fact.

It’s inevitable that redemption will happen for the canceled. But in that space before the comeback, the best tool remains for the court of public opinion to demand apologies and utilize social media for accountability to set a rubric for engagement, for the future people in entertainment who do care about the communities that consume their content.

As it stands, Jess Hilarious has yet to post a link up on her Instagram for her fans to donate to the families of the Christchurch victims as she had committed. While that by no means casts her entire apology into doubt, it should be noted that sincerity goes beyond rhetoric; if promises are made to address large-scale controversies but left behind as soon as the social media fervor quells, then that is merely lip service that may fall under the radar at present—but will manage to rear its ugly head at the point of the next misstep.

While redemption is inevitable for the rich and famous, there is a difference between it coming at the hands of the ruling class as opposed fans, who want nothing more than to enjoy their work.

“How else do we, the public, [who are] largely powerless in the everyday execution of systems of value, moderate society without something like cancel culture?,” Felix asks. Adding, “Where we can point out in real time the attitudes that perpetuate violence and call them out? That said, does cancel culture work? I don’t know, but it’s what we have. I think it helps mobilize people and direct intentions toward better legislative possibilities.”

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Megan Thee Stallion and the Persistence of Music Journalism’s Misogyny

Originally published for Broadly.

It felt predatory. In a resurfaced two-minute clip, rising Houston rap phenom Megan Thee Stallion (b. Megan Pete) is interviewed by a man named DJ Smallz Eyes. Instead of sticking to questions about her lauded freestyle ability, ascent in the Southern rap scene, or currently being a student at Texas Southern University, he questions the 23-year-old about elective surgery. At an especially cringe-worthy moment, Smallz Eyes asks her “Did you develop early?” —a question that seems to have no other purpose than to fulfill the school-boy fantasies of anyone watching. Continue reading →

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The Dark Reality of Being a Brand Influencer

Originally published for Broadly as part of my “Extremely Online” monthly column.

Not long ago, a viral story sent the internet into a frenzy: Mommy blogger Katie Bower expressed that her six-year-old son receives the least “likes” on Instagram out of all of her children. In a caption attached to his birthday weekend post, Bower wrote “It killed me inside. His photos never got as many likes. Never got comments. From a statistical point of view, he wasn’t as popular with everyone out there. Maybe part of that was the pictures just never hit the algorithm right.”

Continue reading →

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How the Internet Became a Playground for Exploiting Black Creators

Originally published for Broadly as part of my “Extremely Online” monthly column.

In Extremely Online, Shamira Ibrahim investigates the origins and impact of internet phenomena, viral trends, and other online mysteries that shape our daily digital experiences. This piece is also part of In Browsing Black History, in which we celebrate Black History Month by exploring the origins of internet trends and icons popularized by Black cultural producers, too often left uncredited for their work. Continue reading →

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‘Hang the Whites’: Rapper’s Hate Speech Trial Exposes the Hypocrisy of Race Relations in France

Originally published for The Root.

The music video for 34-year-old French rapper Nick Conrad’s “Pendez les Blancs” (“Hang the Whites”) opens with a jarring visual akin to the title itself: the lifeless body of a white man on a noose, while Conrad (a black man of Cameroonian descent) stands beside him lighting a cigar.

It’s a role reversal intended to make even the most unperturbed person’s pupils dilate, with lyrics to match: In the opening lines, he speaks about entering daycares to kill white babies and then hang their parents.

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Throughout the rest of the nine-minute clip, Conrad leans into a macabre inversion of anti-black violence via reenactments of culturally relevant and critically acclaimed films such as Get Out and American History X—including the latter’s iconic curb stomp scene—while wordsmithing references to actual atrocities committed against the black diaspora at the hands of white supremacists. Each line intentionally evokes a new horror, superimposed with a white face—from the whippings and lynchings described with syntax akin to that of “Strange Fruit” (“hanging from trees in cosmic emptiness/these filthy fruits provide a fascinating show”) to descriptions of torturing insubordinates to subdue rebellion to the endless wars waged for profit. Halfway through the video, a Malcolm X quote is put on the screen: “The price of freedom is death.” As a coda to his final verse, Conrad declares that he is “reversing the triangular trade” via “Black History X,” cleverly tying together themes of his song and the corresponding video by making the race reversal concept and the purpose of the cinematic allusions even more overt.

Uploaded to YouTube in September, “PLB” gained the attention of French politicians and organizations, and the backlash was swift: Far-right leader Marine Le Pen declared the video an instance of “anti-white racism” and a call to hatred and murder, demanding that the transgression be rewarded with appropriate penalties on all social media platforms. France’s interior minister, Gerard Collomb, responded in kind, stating on Twitter, “I condemn without reservation these abject remarks and ignominious attacks.” LICRA, France’s largest organization intended to fight racism and anti-Semitism, put out a statement calling the video “abject and incredibly violent” and called for legal action. YouTube promptly removed the video from its platform, claiming that it “violated hate speech guidelines.” In just a few days, Nick Conrad went from being a little-known artist with under 1,000 average hits a month to the No. 1 trending topic in France.

Pursuant to the outcry, French prosecutors investigated and determined that Conrad’s artistic license violated France’s codified press laws by causing “incitement to racial discrimination, hatred, or violence on the basis of one’s origin or membership in an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group”—in this case, Caucasians. The charge is similar to one made in 2015 against Saïdou of the well-known French group ZEP for their song “Nique la France” (“Fuck France”), in which he would be charged and later absolved of targeting hate speech toward those who were “Français de souche,” or French to the root—namely, again, Caucasians.

Proceedings began this past Wednesday with Conrad and his team facing off against complainants LICRA and the far-right leaning LAGRIF (General Alliance Against Racism and for Respect for French and Christian Identity). Reports of the trial describe Conrad enumerating in detail how the concept of the video was not only informed by multiple popular cultural and historical references (which the complainants allege are not ones that French people know well), but also the reality of his life and upbringing in France: “There is so much oppression and innuendo in society on a daily basis, even in a subliminal way; there are so many things that may elude most, but we see them.”

Conrad was questioned over his reference to Malcolm X, and the complainants implied that the deceased black liberation activist was an anti-white racist and black supremacist, unlike a more peaceful Martin Luther King. In a stunning but familiar pivot, one member of LAGRIF’s counsel team maintained, “It’s all the white man’s fault. But do we talk about the Arab slave trade and the black people who sold their brothers?”

Beyond these cartoonishly incorrect readings of history, implicit in the discussion is the assumption that racism is an equal exchange of offenses as opposed to a systemic construction. All sins are not created equal, and the collective weight of the black struggle is a debt that has accumulated over time. Under the guise of “universalism,” the French community’s continued reluctance to allow their nonwhite compatriots to confront those failings in an open space has long provided cover for oppressive tactics, to the point that France has worked to ban events and gatherings targeted for black people on the grounds of racism. It’s a farce of an exercise in a country that has yet to even track any sort of race-related census, consistently putting forth a narrative that race is not even a consideration in French identity as recently as the World Cup.

The scenes and lyrics played out in Conrad’s video are indisputably graphic, but that has hardly precluded people from understanding a performer’s artistic vision before. In Childish Gambino’s video for “This Is America,” a black man is shot in the head point blank, and a church choir is gunned down; released with similar shock value intent, it received acclaim and is currently nominated for a Grammy. Contemporaries notwithstanding, the question remains: If the scenes depicted in Conrad’s video were near-facsimiles of movies that have become cultural staples, why are we so comfortable celebrating and watching these same portrayals of violence against black people without discomfort?

Despite the perpetual efforts to distance itself from systematic wrongdoing against the black community, France has still been a site of unjustifiable black deaths: 24-year-old Adama Traore’s death in police custody in 2016 has largely gone unanswered by both the government and LICRA. Meanwhile, both institutions continue to hold court over perceived offenses of reverse racism. This dynamic evidences the power imbalance that Conrad sought to flip on its head, albeit crudely. If merely the visualization of violence against white people causes panic, however visceral, it should stand to reason that the accrued toll of centuries of brutality against black people at the hands of white supremacy is immeasurable. Whether or not Conrad is found guilty during his March 19 sentencing, there is a clear failure of France’s vocal white demographic to appreciate the magnitude of that calculus.

As Conrad’s lawyers stated, “[The song] is a violent, shocking, disturbing piece of art. But history itself is violent, shocking and disturbing.”

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