The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Thursday, October 3, 2013 - 3B
Where have all the
femcees gone?
Detroit-based art gallery provides space and options for up-and-coming artists in the area.
" "
City Drift backs
Detroit'satist
Art gallery builds
bridges between
public, creators
By OMAR MAHMOOD
Daily Arts Writer
A few weeks after the news
broke that Detroit was finally
declaring bankruptcy, around
the time former mayoral can-
didate Mike Duggan was mak-
ing gains despite being taken
off the ballot, my dad and I set
out with an old friend to scout
the lots that lay decrepit in the
shadows of grand skyscrapers. It
seemed everyone wanted a piece
of Detroit now, with the public
auctions nearing. What drew
my dad's friend to the streets, to
Cass Corridor and Grand River,
was art. He was a long-time
oncologist-turned-muralist,
scouting for his own gallery in
midtown.
Jennifer Junkenheimer, a
curator hailing from New York,
works in contemporary art and
has partnered with City Drift
which, according to its website,
is an enterprise and worldwide
project that resurrects non-
traditional art of the city under
the "umbrella of the derive,"
that has now turned its eyes on
Detroit.
"I don't call myself an artist,
really. I'm a curator. So my job is
to ... bridge gaps between artists
and the public," Junkheimer
said.
She took the job with a calm
sureness, treading carefully
away from sensationalism. I
had been to the City Drift gal-
lery that weekend. It was on a
broken-down corner, a forlorn
brick building that used to be
a bank. A few paces down the
street arched a rusting bridge
emblazoned "Welcome to
Detroit," in an almost satirical
beauty, when only across the
wiry playground fence was an
old car warehouse overgrown
with weeds and shattered wind-
shields.
There was an inextricable
connection between City Drift
and the auto industry. Maybe it
was the murals of Diego Rivera
that, as far away as they were
on the courtyard walls of the
Detroit Institute of Art, seemed
to watch over the pieces. And
the pieces themselves spoke of
cars. One was a mountain of old
tires, all identical.
Another, called "Bumper
Cars," featured a string of old
car grills and bumpers, with
Chrysler, Dodge, Ford and
GMC still emblazoned, welded
stubbornly onto their frames.
Yet another was a sledgeham-
mer strung onto a windshield
which the viewer was sup-
posed to smash apart. The wall
opposite was lined with carved
metal shapes, beautifully woven
scraps and manifestos from
unions and protestors were
written in simple little notes
under each one.
When asked what she made
of the heavy auto motif, Junken-
heimer thoughtfully explained:
"It's probably not because the
culture of the city is so much
about cars or anything. If you
look around Detroit, a lot of
the empty businesses had to do
with cars, so that's what the art-
ists have to work with now."
As a part of the art commu-
nity, her job was not to worry
about trends and to name things.
It was clear, though, that some-
thing was up-and-coming. She
talked of her friend Thomas Bell,
the man behind Bumper Cars.
The artist and his partner had
moved to Detroit, of all places,
from New York, of all places.
Why?
"New York is just so expen-
sive. ... And artists tend to come
from lower economic status,
so you know, when New York
got unbearable they just kicked
out anyone who couldn't pay,"
Junkenheimer said.
It seemed that Thomas Bell
had found a living in Detroit. He
had his own gallery, for once.
And he wasn't the only one.
That's how you know when the
city is on the up: when the artists
start moving in.
Junkenheimer insisted that
artists have found a new home in
Detroit. "Although I don't live in
Detroit, for the record," she clar-
ified. She was part of the Detroit
arts circle, but a new voice and
one removed as well, because
her partner was a professor
at the Stamps School of Art &
Design here.
She emphasized the need to
change an attitude: "Detroit for
us can't just be a Tigers game,"
she said.
When she takes students out to
see sites, they come upon places
that are nice, that are glossy,
places that you'd never expect to
see in Detroit. She talked about
one recent project of hers where
she took viewers out to a Finnish
sauna at 2 a.m. Everything about
the project seemed to be about
subverting stereotypes about
Detroit. A Finnish sauna, right in
someone's backward. In Detroit.
Take Adil, our oncologist-
turned-muralist. He hails from
the suburbs and has spent his
career as an oncologist. His art
has long been a basement mat-
ter, but now he's moved out into
the open and has found that
Detroit is asking for something
more. City Drift itself shows
off pictures of the doctor paint-
ing Urdu poetry on the "Wall
of Freedom," next to bubbled
graffiti native only to Detroit -
prayer of the mother, read the
blue letters, air of heaven.
"Detroit is gritty; Detroit is
tough, " Junkenheimer said. "If
someone were to ask me where
to go for art, I wouldn't say Ann
Arbor. I would say Detroit."
T he first verse on the
introduction to Snoop
Dogg's landmark debut
album Doggystyle is aggressive,
witty and rapped with force.
Here's an
excerpt:
"Never
will there
ever be
another like -
me / You can
play the left,
cuz it ain't JACKSON
no right in HOWARD
me / out the
picture, out
the frame, out the box I knock
em all / Smack em out the park,
like a friendly game of baseball
/ Grand, slam, yes I am / Kickin
up dust and I don't give a god-
damn!"
Do you know who rapped
that? It wasn't Snoop, Dr. Dre,
Daz, Kurupt or Warren G.
Instead, it was a rapper by the
name of Lady of Rage who, in
the early 1990s, was considered
such an incredible lyricist that
she - not Snoop himself - was
given the honor of rapping
the album's first verse. There
once was a time when female
emcees (femcees) were not only
given the same respect as their
male counterparts, but actually
achieved similar levels of com-
mercial success.
Today, however, the story
couldn't be more different.
Since 2005, only one female
rapper has attained as much
success and acclaim as her male
contemporaries: Nicki Minaj.
Every other female rapper of
the past 20 years has either
stopped recording or faded into
oblivion. What happened to the
female emcee? Why, since the
early 2000s, have female rap-
pers been on the steady decline,
both in numbers and in record
sales? And, last but maybe most
intriguing, why does it seem
like the American public has
lost interest in female rappers?
There is no definitive answer.
However, if we look back at the
history of femcees, some clues
emerge.
Between 1988 and 1989,
Queen Latifah, MC Lyte and
Roxanne Shantd exploded onto
the scene with three classic
debut albums. These rappers
relied on their lyrics - not
their bodies - for success, and
preached predominately femi-
nist messages in their songs,
highlighted by Latifah's classic
"Ladies First."
The 1990s, though, were the
real height for female rappers.
Almost every hip-hop label
or crew during the decade
boasted a femcee on its roster
at some point: Lady of Rage
and Storm on Deathrow, Lil
Kim on Bad Boy, Eve on Ruff
Ryders, Remy Ma on Terror
Squad, Da Brat on So So Def,
Rah Digga on Flipmode and
Foxy Brown - who actually
started solo on Def Jam - later
on Roc-a-fella are just some
of the many female rappers
who had prominent positions
in some of rap's most storied
crews.
These women were not
just placeholders, though. Da
Brat, Foxy Brown, Lil Kim,
Eve, Missy Elliott and Lau-
ryn Hill all released platinum
albums in the 1990s, while
TLC, featuring the talents of
the incredible, late rapper Left
Eye, sold a whopping 21 mil-
lion records. What is impor-
tant to note, in addition to the
record sales, is these artists'
subject matter. While the lyr-
ics had certainly shifted from
feminist pioneers like Latifah
and Lyte in the late 1980s to a
more party-centric and sexed-
up approach, by no means was
sex the only subject matter for
these women. It was, as it was
for men, just another aspect.
No two rappers demon-
strated the unimportance of
blatant sex appeal in their
raps as did Missy Elliott and
Lauryn Hill, two of the most
successful and talented art-
ists - male or female - of
the past few decades. Missy's
groundbreaking debut, 1997's
Supa Dupa Fly, pushed sonic
boundaries with the help of a
then-up-and-coming producer
named Timbaland and proved
that female rappers didn't have
to exude sex to be success-
ful. Hill's magnum opus The
Miseducation ofLauryn Hill
went eight times platinum and
won five Grammys, including
Album of the Year. Even more
remarkable was the fact that
the album centered on themes
of love, race, class and religion,
not necessarily the makings of
a pop smash, especially from a
woman rapper. With the suc-
cesses of the aforementioned
women and the revolutionary
projects put forth by Hill and
Elliott, it's clear that the '90s
- specifically the latter half -
were the femcee golden age.
Sexualized
lyrics spell
demise for
female rappers.
The 2000s, however, were
the beginning of the end. As
more female rappers focused
solely on sexual and degrading
music (Khia, Trina, Jacki-O,
Foxy Brown, even Missy in
later years), the lyrical stan-
dard for women began to fade.
Lady of Rage, Da Brat, Rah
Digga and Three 6 Mafia's
Gangsta Boo (among others)
fell off the map by the mid-
2000s, while, maybe worst of
all, Lauryn Hill completely
stopped making music, plagued
by personal and legal troubles.
Eve released a platinum album
in 2001, a gold one in 2002 and
then not another until this past
year, while Lil Kim (before
going to jail) and Missy Elliott
both released their final proj-
ects in 2005.
What went wrong? One
theory could be that the three
most admirable and success-
ful femcees - Eve, Lauryn Hill
and Missy Elliott - stopped
putting out albums for a variety
of reasons, leaving their fellow
rappers with no leadership.
Another theory is that in the
mid-2000s, rap as a genre was
in a serious crisis (Nas named
his 2006 album Hip-Hop Is
Dead) and lyricism was no
longer appreciated. However, I
believe that what ultimately set
back female rappers is, unfor-
tunately but not unexpectedly,
the increasingly sexualized
nature of their raps, certainly
influenced by being women
working in a genre that has a
history of promoting misogy-
nistic and degrading sexual
content. Simply put, their sub-
ject matter has been limited to
only matters of sex. For many
femcees, it was either sex up
or fade out, and the few who
continued to sell records were
those who kept their sex appeal
at embarrassingly high levels.
Just look at Trina's first
verse from her aptly titled song
"No Panties," released in 2002:
"Look boo, what's the deal?
/ You got my cash so you can
stick it here? / I know you be
packing the steel / But I can't
suck your dick and get my lip-
stick smeared." Subtle is clearly
not in Trina's vocabulary.
Nicki Minaj is a great
example of this pressure.
Discovered by Lil Wayne as
a hard-spitting battle rapper
out of Queens, N.Y., Minaj is
now an overly-sexualized, self-
professed "Barbie" who seems
to turn on her lyrical abili-
ties - of which she has plenty
- only when forced to. Today,
major crews like Rick Ross's
Maybach Music, Kanye West's
G.O.O.D. Music and Jay-Z's Roc
Nation lack female rappers,
and though there is hope with
young rappers such as Azealia
Banks, Jean Grae, Angel Haze
and Rapsody - artists who
aren't as pressured by rap
music's pre-existing standards
into over-sexualizing them-
selves through sacrificing their
lyrical content and personal
integrity - the window of
opportunity for female emcees
appears discouragingly small.
"A woman can bear you,
break you, take you / Now it's
time to rhyme, can you relate
to / a sister dope enough to
make you holler and scream?"
Queen Latifah asked on "Ladies
First," and until the rap game
and the American public begins
acknowledging female rappers
again for their lyrics and not
their bodies, ladies will con-
tinue to be second.
Howard is looking for
Missy Eliott. To help, e-mail
jackhow@umich.edu.
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
One time I watched a My
Bloody Valentine music video,
and it was exactly everything you
would expect
an MBV music B+
video to look
like. The song Heavenly
was "Swal- Boie
low,' and its
video featured Tamaryn
slow-motion Mexican Summer
close-ups of
astrumming
guitar, completely faded over
with bluish-pinkish streams of
light. It was muddled and hazy
and perfectly MB. ingunderwater,slowly sink- several tim
The music video for New ing, aimless and relaxed with There's r
Zealand vocalist Tamaryn's shimmers of light occasionally that you co
track "Heavenly Bodies" is shining through from above. closingyour
decidedly similar. The video for Tamaryn appears several times, "Bodies."A
slowly comes into focus, reveal- her hair stringy and wet, makeup won't be get
ing a blue sky as viewed from smeared and skin dewy, an points fortl
underwater. The whole video overlay of water droplets sliding nod to the a
has a wet, aquatic feeling to it, down a glass wall occasionally the genre a
overwashed with various hues appearing. And of course there's and it's cert
of purples, blues and greens. It the obligatory close-up of a guy art to accon
lends an overall feeling of drift- playing a guitar that shows up