Last night as I re-watched Love Jones for the millionth time, I had an epiphany. The 90's was the best time to be black and be in entertainment. And at first my mind wanted to separate the decade between early 90's and late but in general the 90's were just a GREAT time to be young, black, and talented.
I feel that my generation (20ish - 29ish give or take), us 80's babies, grew up in a time where entertainment was awesome for us ppl of color. I remember New Jack Swing, listening to my aunt's tapes of Guy and Mary J., having my mother show me the movie New Jack City, and tell me it's real out here (true story lol). I remember Gerald Levert's (RIP) song Cassanova. I remember Thursday night on fox when it went Martin, Living Single, and New York Undercover. And I had to sneak and finish NY undercover because bed time was at 9. I remember NEVER missing A Different World and if I did my Grammy taped them. I remember some of the older kids at my church with their walkmans playing Aaliyah Back and Forth. I remember wanting to go to a Teen Summit show. Rap City. Planet Groove with Rachel's fine ass. I remember the show Thea and a young ass Brandy. Speaking of... Moesha, Q, and Hakim. I used to not be able to listen to Red Light Special, R. Kelly's 12 Play, and Jodeci's Diary of a Mad Band. Dre. Snoop. Biggie. Pac. Cube. Nas. Jay. Movie wise there's Boyz in the Hood, Juice, House Party(s), Boomerang, Harlem Nights, Strictly Bizness, Livin Large, Class Act, Waiting to Exhale, Poetic Justice, Mo Betta Blues, He Got Game, Trespass, Sixth Sense...
I mean I could really go on forever. But I won't. The point is this is a time where black entertainment and black art were both budding. Creatively there was more control and the content in general was awesome. The 90's is also the time where Black entertainment's rise to financial power came to be. Pre-downloading and free mixtapes, everyone was really making money and I think that is where it got lost. The commodity that is now "Urban Music" is spoon fed to the masses. And Northerners wanted to blame the South for it. Don't do it. Because when NY cats like Nas (not singling him out but...) really got that money and made those poppy tunes, cats like 8ball and MJG, UGK, Outkast, Scarface, Goodie Mob were making quality music. Rap-A-Lot Records was on some classic hip-hop shit.
R&B as a genre, presently, has even faded. The 90's is R&B. The genre evolved creating sub-genre's like Neo-Soul, like a Prince-esque Funk that people like Lucy Pearl and Meshell Ndegeocello embodied, like a crossover R&B that was distinctly R&B which post Tommy Matolla (sp?) Mariah Carey embodied.
Now this bama Neyo and this bama Usher put out pop singles and "urban" singles. Some say the game has evolved, but I say these bamas coppin out. Usher came up in the 90's. Go listen to his 1st and 2nd CD and then listen to that shit of an album Raymond v. Raymond and tell me where is the focus musically? Think about Confessions and you tell me the popish single on that album. There ain't one. Same with Neyo pop single and "urban" single. I will give it to Trey. He gets a pass for consistently trying to make "good" R&B music. And the ladies singing that same tired ass relationship ass shit. I need a little more tact from my ladies. It's like once Keyshia Cole blew up everyone wanted to run with the hood-esque look and feel. But the thing is, as we saw on the now terrible BET, that's how Keyshia is. All these new female singers are fitting a mold. The hood/Nikki Minaj mold. Colorful and glittery hair, super long and super bad tracks. It's sad it's being recycled. I even blame Beyonce a tad, just for the tracks lls, but she stayed R&B. To be honest other than Mariah's Emancipation of MiMi, which is a modern day classic, I think Teedra Moses' Complex Simplicity is right behind Mariah as modern day classic R&B.
And movies... Soul fucking Plane. Just the fact that it got made is a problem. Like someone read the script and said "Yes. Let's do this." That's rough. I aint gonna lie I laughed when I first saw it, which was for free. But it is inexcusable. A movie like that can never be made again. I could go on to the lack of good content on television and the big screen and the stage provided to us by Tyler Perry studios but that's old news. I think that's a readily accepted fact.
I'm calling on my generation to be the creators. As you can see in music, there is a slow resurgence of that grassroots movement in hip-hop. You can see it starting to build and take form. You can also see it starting to be compromised by the powers that be (ex. Wiz's Black and Yellow sub-par). But it needs to happen not only in music, but in film (which I promise to do my part), all aspects of art, photography, writing, etc. etc. The biggest lie is that we are in a post racial society. By now we know that that is not true (Qu'ran Burnings, Oscar Grant, SB 1070). We need to be the designers and the re-designers. We now have the power and the potential to change the way art is viewed for generations to come. By 2110, if ppl ever make it to that, who's gonna give a flying fuck about the Mona Lisa? Technology will have us so far removed from things of that "classical" nature that it will almost be pointless. It will be like learning Latin (which I did NLE cum laude award fool) good to know but fuckin pointless in the bigger picture. Be the creators. Be the chance takers and create from an authentic place. Because it is authenticity, which was ever so prevalent in 90's, not as much now, that will last.
touché
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