The Real Story of Black Women in Pop

Originally published for The Meteor Newsletter on April 16, 2022


It’s impossible to discuss the last 25 years of  Black popular music criticism without invoking the name Danyel Smith—the first woman to serve as Vibe magazine’s editor in chief. Between her career as a writer, helping capture and document the musical soundscapes that reflect different facets of Black life, to her personal journey, anchored by the ebbs and flows of Black popular culture—Smith’s frame of reference is deeply informed by an innate understanding of the transformative power of music history and its integral role in the definition of cultural identity and belonging. Now, with Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop,  Smith expertly places herself in the canon of Black writers and de facto archivists such as Greg TateCheryl Wall, and Saidiya Hartman. It’s part history, part memoir, and along the way, it also reclaims Black women’s rightful place in pop music.

Shamira Ibrahim: One thing I’ve always liked about your writing is the way you make these intricate connections. You start with connecting “Queen of Disco” Donna Summer to the 18th-century poet Phyllis Wheatley. How have you honed the ability to draw these connections for people who may not immediately see the through-lines that go from antebellum slavery through generations of pop music?

DANYEL SMITH (PHOTO BY DREW ALLYN)

Danyel Smith: I appreciate the close attention to the text—that always matters to me very much. At this point in my career, it’s just the way I think, and frankly, I decided to stop fighting it. I have training as a journalist – years of on-the-job training, some training from school, some me training myself, and a lot of that has to do with getting things right. Getting the dates right, getting the moments right, getting the details right. For me, a big part of my work is resisting summary; I feel like so often, Black women’s lives are written about in summary. It is a privilege to have the time, honestly, to just actually think.

I really do adore and admire and often engage with Phyllis Wheatley and her work; the same for Donna Summer. I don’t know that I thought about them both being Boston girls until I was getting close to maybe the midpoint of this book. You’re just writing Boston a million times, and you’re checking your spelling of Massachusetts a million times, and something shakes out; you hear the Boston inflection again in Donna Summers’ voice. It came to me because I had time to think and then had the confidence to stop fighting that negative voice in my head that says, “does that really matter?”

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

Did Afropunk Lose Its Punk Roots?

Originally published for VerySmartBrothas.

This weekend, a sea of unapologetic blackness will descend upon Fort Greene’s Commodore Barry Park for Brooklyn, N.Y.’s 12th Annual Afropunk Fest. Instagram feeds and Twitter hashtags everywhere will be peppered with twist-outs and bold prints; your favorite vibe curator will inevitably make a thread of the best of the best of the audience’s fabulous crochets and Afrocentric jewelry. For 48 hours, Snapchat stories will be dominated by a time capsule of what the festival organizers have described on their home page as “a day of live music and good vibes.”

It’s clear to anyone with a pulse on black digital media that the zeitgeist is currently led by celebrations of “peak melanin,” “unapologetic blackness” and branded T-shirts to match; it stands to reason that Afropunk is an organic extension of this branch of cultural exultation. However, the Afropunk of 2017 is a far cry from the inaugural gathering of 2005—not to mention the namesake 2003 documentary by James Spooner that was the inception of it all. In little over a decade, the event has gone from a donation-only gathering to a $55-per-day festival with notable sponsorship from international brands such as Toyota, Coors Light and Red Bull.

Transition, of course, is natural. That said, in the wake of this evolution seems to lie the rubble of the original core fan base that Afropunk was conceived to service: a cultural niche that grew out of a film whose original intended title was “The Rock and Roll Nigger Experience.” How does that fan base feel about the current iteration of this space? And what conversations should we be having about the trade-offs between demographic integrity and mainstream appeal?

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