old Queen

My obsession with female rappers is growing more severe by the day. Yesterday I took it all a step further. What did  I do? It was simple: I got into touch with the one female rapper I have actually known in reality, a girl whom we will call Anijah. Yea ..I met Anijah last year on Twitter, when I used to run an Azealia Banks fan page, and though Anijah actually despises Azealia, we sort of connected over our mutual love of femme rap. Then though,in September of 2016, we sadly lost touch, mostly because I refused to give Anijah my number and I forced her to solely communicate with me through long e-mail letters, which she promptly got tired of. So finally yesterday I went and found her again -- Anijah runs a YouTube site giving makeup tips--and we began to talk again. A little bit. Not as much as I would like (I was expecting her to bombard me with texts, maybe) but at least a little bit.

She had some pretty interesting news to share with me, and as usual with people I know, a great deal has changed in her life. For starters, Anijah has made a rather enormous geographical move: She started out in Brooklyn, so she tells me, and when I met her she was in South Carolina, and now it turns out -- so she says -- that she's all the way in Miami, Florida. She has re-united with her husband. Last I heard he was kind of crazy. I have no idea. I just imagine him to be some enormous dude who probably looks like an NFL linebacker. He is probably threatening. From the sound of it, he is. Anyways, Anijah is living down there in Miami with this husband and she tells me , much to my shock, that she is eager to go and audition for Love and Hip Hop in Miami. This was very bizarre to me, I have to admit! Because it was ike ..woah...what da fuq...is this a female rapper coming to life now on my actual text messages here?

That show is, like...that's where you go when you want to become legitimate, when you want to swim up above sea level. For example, I wrote once before about how I first discovered the Georgia Peach, Rasheeda, on Spotify, late one night, and became obsessed with her....and she was so mysterious...and then one day I turned around, searched a little more for her, and there she was on this show. I have to admit: I was sort of disappointed when I found Rasheeda on Love and Hip hop in Atlanta. She didn't seem much like the Rasheeda I had imagined there I guess. Of course, I have since tried to get used to it, and become a fan of Rasheeda as she is on that show, just like I'm a fan of her music. The problem ,I think, is that I don't like watching Rasheeda share the limelight with all of those other characters on the show. Every time I tuned in, or watched old episodes, I just wanted to see her. I suspect it would maybe be the same with Anijah if she auditioned and actually got on...

As much as I love all of this "black" culture in my way, I have to admit that the TV part of it kind of bothers me, in some respects, more than the misogynistic & homophobic male hip hop ever did. From one angle, I think the Reality TV is an approach that the black community might think is helping them, because it is showing all us plain Jane whites that they have, you know, real lives, above ground, during the day. But I think that reality tv is actually a bit of a curse, and it actually seems to me to make an ethnic cultures image that much worse. For example, my own Italians have certainly fallen prey to the reality tv trap, just like the blacks have, and this is best seen in shows like Jersey Shore and that other one with "Big Ang" called Mob Wives. Yes, I believe that's the name: Mob Wives. I will gleefully admit to my reader: I have watched black reality TV, but I have never actually watched my own Italians. I don't think I would be able to take it. I would vomit. I would scream. I would curl up in the covers at night weeping and crying, to see my Italians portrayed.....like that. Which is why I again say: I think reality tv is more of a curse than a blessing.

I'm not sure it's the dream I have for Anijah, like she clearly has for herself. I'm excited for Anijah when I think of her releasing a mixtape, like she keeps saying she wants to ,or when I think of her working as, say, a hair stylist or a makeup artist, etcetc. But as a reality tv star? Oh, I don't know. I guess I'm happy for her...I'll tell her I am..."oh Anijah yes! Do it! Go to the audition! Yes girl yes!" ...but deep down..my gay white boy heart....is shattered. How come? Because I feel the show would steal her artist soul. Which seems to be what it did to Rasheeda to me. Rasheeda, if you look at her records, she was her own person back in the 00's and early 10's. Then she took that show, and just became a charactr on the show. She no longer compares to Azealia Banks for me, whom she once sort of went to toe to toe with (in my white boi brain).  Azealia is still running her own independent theatre, you see, and she's still very interesting, and controversial. She has this company called XoCheapy and it's some sort of soap making business. She's an independent chick...ironically one of Rasheedas song titles... 

So whats the solution, you ask? To dismantling the reality tv hive mind?

The solution is real drama, which thankfully my Italians have also always had a good bit of, in addition to still being stuck with this reality TV bullshit in the 21st century. Indeed, in my opinion, nothing can bring a group to that area of being truly beloved like an actual properly filmed drama can. The problem, however, is that we have to be eventually allowed to see our "ethnic" actors go off on their own, and break out of their ethnic shell. What this means is that, when you look at someone like Al Pacino, you'll see that he started out in the Godfather, completely trapped in his ethnic shell as an Italian from New York, but then,  when you go to find Al in the 90s, you see him taking roles like Insomnia, where he's still Al Pacino, but now he's in Alaska, very disconnected from the Italians back home, and doing his own thing. This aspect of "doing his own thing" is very important for the ethnic breakout...and it's something I have noticed many blacks and Latino actors still don't get a chance to do. Jennifer Lopez, for example, has a show I was watching (I watch dubbed in Spanish) called Shades of Blue. It was of course just her playing a Puerto Rican cop in New York. Boring! Go play a mermaid, J-Lo. Go play a whaler. Go play a snowboarder. Anything except who you actually are...that's my advice. Always my advice. Azealia Banks did the film Love Beats Rhymes. Guess what is about? A black femme rapper, from New York. And not just that, but a struggling black femme rapper. Its hard for me to watch personall, even though I will watch it 30 times. I want to see Azealia become someone else when she acts. I want to see her become a cowgirl, or create the next big Star Wars film. I want to see Azealia Banks with a lightsaber or a sword. I want to see Azealia in a blockbuster movie loosely based off of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel.

This is what I mean about the importance of escaping ethnicity. Love Beats Rhymes is just like Love and Hip Hop: It doesn't reach the folks that need to be reached, and slapped, and taught a serious lesson.

But good Lord almighty what am I talking about? I was trying to discuss Anijah. Remember her?Yea...I was trying to say how she is not as open as I thought she might be and it's making me sad. I suppose she is busy and doesn't have time for an old white queen like me. When she was still living in South Carolina she used to say she'd drive up north and come to "beat my face". Sounds extreme...I know..but it turns out it is just drag queen slang for getting my face all made up pretty, and maybe even getting the chance to wear a WIG! Oh my gosh....wigs....I can't even....my heart skips a beat when I think of wigs. Also robes. Silk robes. I can imagine sitting with Anijah, or some cosmetics mastermind just like her, in a big comfortable room, filled with little mannequin heads that have wigs on them...filled with pink fur coats and colorful silk kimonos. That would be an actual good life to be living. Unlike this one. Sigh. When I dream to be a queen, I hate it, because it is so far away from me and it makes me so depressed. On Twitter there is a boy from Mississippi who has a quote "....all my life I had to fight to wear mascara..." The boy hates everyone, including me, but I relate with him so much. I never even got to wear the mascara, chico. I lost the fight. No, worse: I never even got started fighting. I just sat here loking sad, isolated and alone...wishing someone as cool as Anijah would talk to me.

But they never do. I'm just an old white queen, and I often veer off into weird conversations no one wants to hear from a gay boi. Like when I start referencing politics, or things like that, everyone gets bothered. Who knows. Not me. I'm outcasted even in the circles of the outcasts.Forever Alone.

---n0tes from da White Queen