Singing towards Sexual Subjectivity By Misa Dayson

Shout out to Misa for sharing her thoughts with the MGH (that’s My Global Hustle for the slow people). Check it out folks & let me know what you think. -!YG

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Your hands on my hips

Pull me right back to you

I catch that thrust

Give it right back to you

You’re in so deep

I’m breathin’ for you

You grab my braids

Arch my back high for you

You’re a diesel engine

I’m squirting out oil

All down on the floor

Til my speakers start to boil

I flip shit

Quick slip

Hip dip

And I’m twisted

In your hands

And your lips

And your tongue tricks

And you’re so thick

And you’re so Crown Royal on ice

Crown Royal on ice

[REPEAT]

-Jill Scott, â€œCrown Royalâ€

Emerging from her newest album, The Real Thing: Words and Sounds Vol. 3, Jill Scottâ€™s song, â€œCrown Royalâ€, never fails to fascinate and amaze me no matter how many times I hear it. Listening to this song I realize that despite the fact that sex and sexuality are so visible and pervasive in our society, I am still not used to hearing a female entertainer sing so candidly and graphically about sex. I am nearly desensitized to male entertainers singing in raunchy and vivid detail about sex and their desires-from Akinyeleâ€™s â€œPut It In Your Mouthâ€ to J Holidayâ€™s â€œBedâ€-, but I literally have to pause in my tracks when I hear a woman sing about sex and not love. I have to wonder why, despite the Sexual Revolution and the Feminist Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, women are encouraged to be â€œfreeâ€ with their sexuality and demand an end to sexual double standards, but we are still not encouraged to talk openly and frankly about our desires, sex and sexuality in all its complex forms. The most important and astonishing aspect of this song, however, is the fact that it is a Black American women singing, no, crooning about what having sex is like her for her. This song seems borderline revolutionary because it serves an exciting example of how Black women can begin to define their sexuality on their terms in a country that has often encouraged sexual stereotypes about them.

In an essay titled, â€œToward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality: The Problematic of Silence,â€ Evelynn M. Hammonds argues that as part of maintaining White male dominance in America, starting in slavery, Black womenâ€™s bodies have routinely been hyper-sexualized through images of the Jezebel-one stereotypical image of Black women as a seductive, promiscuous woman with an insatiable appetite for sex-, systematically raped, pathologized, and held up in contrast to â€œpureâ€ White womanhood. It is the hyper-sexualized image of Black women that presently holds firm in American discourse about Black female sexuality. Thanks to Hip-Hop, with prevailing images of Black women emphasizing their butts and breasts, these stereotypical images of Black women have reached a global scale. As Hammonds notes, â€œhistorically, Black women have reacted to the repressive force of the hegemonic discourses on race and sex that constructed this image with silence, secrecy, and a partially self-chosen invisibility.â€ In her essay, Hammonds explores why Black feminists in particular seem reluctant to explore how sexuality relates to them and Black women in general. Of particular interest is that â€œin the past, the restrictive, repressive and dangerous aspects of Black female sexuality have been emphasized by Black feminist writers, while pleasure, exploration and agency have gone under analyzed.â€ While her essay focuses on Black feminist writers, her exploration regarding the silence on Black female sexuality by Black women themselves can extend outside of academia to Black female entertainers and everyday Black women in America.

It would be difficult to find a woman who has not complained to friends, families and co-workers about the sexual objectification of women, whether in the media or in their daily lives. What is missing from a lot of these conversations is a clear vision of what an empowering alternative would look like. An alternative that does not require being completely de-sexualized, but that does not require being over sexualized, like for example, a Lilâ€™ Kim or Foxy Brown. While these two hugely popular female rap artists of the 1990s were talking just as raunchily about sex as their male counterparts, which some would argue was very liberating, they often talked about sex in the context as an exchange for material goods, limiting the scope of their sexual empowerment. Pop stars like Rihanna, Ciara or BeyoncÃ© are touted as empowering figures, wearing whatever they want and dancing as suggestively as they (or their choreographers) please; however, their sexuality is always positioned for a male gaze.

â€œCrown Royalâ€ is an exciting song to hear, not only for its titillating effects, but because Jill Scott sings herself not as a sexual object of desire, but as a sexual desiring subject. She sings erotically about sex from her perspective, exuding sensuality in a way that is not pornographic, exploitive, or involving an exchange of sex for money/material goods. This song is especially surprising coming from Jill Scott because she is often grouped with other amazing artists, like Erykah Badu, Mary J. Blige, Angie Stone and India Arie, who often sing about love, relationships and politics, and who do not place their sexuality and body so readily on display like other current popular female entertainers. Furthermore, she is a full-figured woman, representing a figure that mainstream media often relegates to the asexual or non-desirable. â€œCrown Royalâ€ is beautiful, revolutionary and inspiring. I canâ€™t help but say to myself, â€œI want to be like her when I grow up. I want to have that freedom and vision to always be and articulate myself as a desiring subject.â€ Black women need more examples like Ms. Scottâ€™s song to inspire the courage to openly claim and sing their right to sexual freedom and expression on their own terms.