Springing Forward

Well the weather has broken in most cities across the country, except for apparently Chicago as it lightly snowed this past weekend. With the beginning of a new season comes the end of another and no I’m not talking about this God-awful winter that refuses to exit the premises. I’m talking about cuffing season…. It's gone and won’t return again until the leaves start to fall and the air becomes crisp again. So as new boos becomes old news, or stay around for seasons to come. The way people handle the changing of seasons, cuffing season is very interesting, for some they’re holding on to their love. For others, well it’s out with the old and in with the new and hopefully improved. Now those that are in it to win… well this post ain’t really for you. For those of us that crapped out during cuffing season, for whatever reason… this one is for me and you, your mama and your cousin and me too.

As you may have been able to detect my cuffing season did end up somewhere over the rainbow, however I do think that maybe these April Showers will bring May Flowers. For some the season ended abruptly and without warning. For others you were just hanging on until St. Patrick’s Day or the first warm day of the year so you could get a glimpse of what other fish were in the sea. To see if you want to keep what you had or throw it back to the sea and try to catch something different. Whatever the case may have been you are now single and ready to mingle. It doesn't matter if things ended like a sweet dream or a beautiful nightmare, there’s probably no better time to be single than right now springtime. It’s a time for new beginnings, new loves, and new adventures. Now I’m not saying you need to push up on the first half way decent man that has a fresh haircut or completely forget about wintertime boo and the lesson/s you learnt from that situation. Nope, all I'm saying is embrace the warm weather and make it do what it do, because that's what I plan to do. As my mother told me over the phone the other day" get your life, or else at least find someone else's to get". Yes, my mother the school teacher and now grandmother (by her other child... let's make that very clear. No baby for me.) told me that last week.... she's really gotta stop watching the Braxton Family Values, thanks Tamar for incorporating this into my mother's vernacular. So with that said don't let the wintertime blues make for a cruel summer. 

Unsung In The Future

I love the TV show Unsung, that comes on TV One…. Its riveting television. For those that aren’t familiar with the show, if chronicles the rise and fall of various not quite there musical acts. What I mean by not quite there musical acts, are artist that you know their music they were once very popular but they never quite made it to the next level. That icon/legend status of that of the likes of Michael and Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Prince, Madonna, The Beatles etc…. Like they’re not going to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and they’re more likely to be doing the honoring at the BET Awards than being the ones getting honored, no shade. Some of the people the show has covered are Freddie Jackson, Issac Hayes, Sheila E., Teena Maire, Johnny Gill, The Whispers, Alexander O’Neal, the list goes on. The thing is that most of the artist the show has featured their time of greatest has been in the 70’s-80’s, so I was thinking about how I can wait for 5-10 years from now when they’re covering people that were popular in the 90s and/or early 2000s. So I have complied a list of a few people the show should feature in the future.

1) Jodeci- Lord I loved this group… what am I talking about loved, I’m still in love with Jodeci. This group came on the scene in the early 90s and were dubbed the bad boys of R&B. While other groups were talking about making love to you, they wanted to freak you. While others were more like tea and crumpets, they were definitely more like grits and biscuits. The group comprised of two sets of brothers K-ci and Jojo the voices of the group and Devante and Mr. Dalvin. Devante wrote and produced a lot of their music and Mr. Dalvin…. I’m not sure what the hell his function was, other than I wanted him to father my children. Anyway they were amazing… until they self-destructed. Between the drugs and alcohol, K-Ci and Mary J. Blige’s abusive ass relationship the group was bound to break up. I’m really not sure what happened as to why they really broke up, but I’m sure it a had something to do with Devante not showing up to their last music video together, Get on up. I remember seeing this video and thinking…. Oh so we’re not going to address he fact the finest member in the group didn’t show up to the video shoot, oh okay. The group has attempted to get back to together once or twice, but K-ci and Jojo’s voices are shot to all hell and back, cocaine is a hell of a drug boys and girls. Mr. Dalvin looks horrid…. Like he was using dirty needles to shoot up in the 90s and caught a strong case of Hepatitis A, B, C, D and all the way to Z.  Devante seems to not care, my suspicion is that since he wrote a lot of their songs he doesn’t need the money that a reunion would bring, unlike the rest of them he’s good. So yeah they would be a perfect group to be featured, their story is full of all types of fuckery, hell they may need a 2 hour special with all the foolishness that went on and still continues to going on with them.  Maybe they could talk about Mr. Dalvin and T-Boz dating, yeah that happened.

2) Soul For Real- Candy Rain and that’s all I need to say. That song was huge, that song was played at every school dance in 1994-1995. They had a few more hits after that…. I can only remember Everything little thing you do. Well I’m not really sure what happened to them or why they stop making music. Last I heard was that basically all of them were in jail for writing bad checks all around I-285. So Unsung should feature them because nobody has anything idea why they only had two hits.

         

3) Xscape- Where do I begin? Well before Kandi was on the Real Housewives of Atlanta walking around with kegel balls in her cooch all day and making gospel songs at the same damn time, and Tiny was on T.I.’s Family Hustle looking like the wrong side of plastic surgery and butchering the English language. They were apart of fantastic singing group with a set of sisters and I can't remember their names right now but they could sing. They had three albums that still gets spins by me on a very regular basis. Like I'm pretty sure I listened to My Little Secret, yesterday. Their song Understanding was sang by girls all across this country at talent shows when it came out who thought they had any type of vocal ability, okay maybe that was just my school. What I loved about Xscape was that they didn’t look like any other singing groups out at the time. They weren’t classy and sexy like En Vogue or edgy and cool like TLC, or cute and sophisticated like SWV…. Nope they were regular as hell! I mean they looked like my friends older sisters that were in high school/college at the time but they could sing they’re asses off though. That was their gimmick regular ass girls that could sing circles around you.  So the group broke up in the late 90s and nobody really knew why until kinda recently. Kandi said on the RHOA or something that basically one of those Scott sisters thought she was trying to go solo because at the time she was fucking Jeremaine Dupri(their producer). Lord I have no idea why, because he looks tree bark to me, but hey to each is own. I think she said something like she just wanted to try it out because they were always around each other… ok girl. Well one of those sisters didn’t take delight in this and was spreading rumors about Kandi, so the group broke up. It doesn’t seem like the group will be doing a reunion anytime soon, as Kandi has said hell no to that. Plus she’s too busy trying to connect Beat headphones to dildos. Tiny probably can’t even sing for Jesus if T.I. doesn’t say she can and she’s busy buying Kool-Aid for daugther’s group to dye their hair with, so I guess there’s that.  Look at this video..... tell me they didn't look like any of the girls working at your local Burger King at the time.   

4) Ginuwine-  Before Chris Brown was pop, lock, and dropping it for the kids and Omarion was doing praise dancing, the cat daddy, hitting his Dougie, Roger Rabbiting, Bankhead bouncing and pretty much any dance that came out in the last 20 years. Lord he was giving us the best he had in 30 seconds flat at the BET Awards last year.

 There was Ginuwine giving us glimmers of Michael Jackson greatness, remember that breakdown So Anxious. I remember seeing that Pony video for the 1^st time and thinking, who is this man with baby hair that was laid better than Chilli’s from TLC, and why doesn't a person that looks like him go to my school??? Ginuwine was the shit!! His first three albums were awesome. He has come out with more music than that but to me its just not on the level of his first three albums. This probably has to do with the fact that Timbaland pretty much produced the first three albums and not the rest of them. I’m not sure what happened with their working relationship after those albums, my guess is Timbaland started to produce more for Pop acts and started chasing that European money. I pretty much stop paying attention to Ginuwine after he married that big fore headed Sole that I can only remember rapping in that JT Money video; they apparently have 15 kids or something close to that number between the two of them. He still makes pretty decent music, and him Tank, and Tyrese have decided to make their own 5.0 version of LSG to resurrect all of their dying careers. I guess with their powers combined, they’re the Captain Planet of  R& B groups…. I mean they all can sing and I can’t take that away from them. However, ever since Tyrese hopped his ass on Twitter and started bombarding us with misspelled Confucius quotes and whatnot, I’m not here for anything he does with his life. Unless he’s on a city bus singing about having a Coke and a smile, he can keep it. But the best of luck to them.

5) Total- Another female R&B group of the 90s….. some called them the Female version of Jodeci. I’m not sure why?? Maybe because they too liked singing in all leather outfits with shades on…. Idk. What I do know is that they were the shit, and Kissing you, is one of the best songs ever made. They only have two albums and nobody to this day knows why they stop making music. Like after Sittin’ Home came out, they vanished from the musically world. The rumor around my school was that Pam and Keshia broke up and the former lovers could longer work together. We all knew Pam was into boxes and not sticks… without her saying a word about her sexual orientation. I’m pretty sure that the rumor going around my lowkey ratchet high school wasn’t true…. But hey we had no other story to work with so we made up our own shit. My theory is that they were on the Deathrow of the East coast, Bad Boys Records and Puffy just ruins musically careers. He’ll put you on and you’ll get 1-2 hot albums but that’s about it. Don’t believe me ask Craig Mack, Ma$e, Loon, Danity Kane, Day 26, G-Dep, Shyne, Black Rob, Carl Thomas all about it. Hell all these people can be on Unsung themselves because all of their careers all went from glitter to dust, fucking around with Puffy. All I know is the lightskin girl  with the short is now married to Omar Epps and the girl with the long hair may be Vita the rapper.... or maybe Vita is her sister, idk but Unsung should get the bottom of it.

Some honorable mentions of others that can be featured on Unsung are Tevin Campbell, a highlight of this episode should be him on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and him with that Maxine Shaw from Living Single box braid bob because that was kinda confusing for me as to why he thought that hairstyle was a good idea. 702, Next, Hi-Five, Chante Moore, Jade, CeCe Peniston, Dru Hill, Joe, Brownstone, Zhane, Changing Faces, Shai, Silk (actually Shai and Silk can have 30 minute segments... there doesn't seem to be enough to their stories for an hour show) and a host of others. If these things should come to pass Unsung needs to cut me a check. 

School Blues

If I only knew what I know now back then…. Maybe I wouldn’t be in the situation I’m in now. Everyone has regrets of some kind and they all vary in degree. Maybe you shouldn’t have spent your rent money buying tickets to the Beyoncé Mrs. Carter tour, doing that tequila shot with all the Jack Daniels you drank was the wrong move, being 16 and pregnant…. These are just some of the regrets a person can have. We all have them, mine lately has been “bitch you should’ve gone to Grad School immediately after Undergrad”. These past few months have been nothing but a damn struggle…  I mean Like D’jango’s wife trying to find the Underground Railroad and getting her Freedom Papers struggle, okay that’s a bit of an exaggeration but my struggle is real. A struggle that I can only think that would’ve been less of a struggle if I attempted to go to Grad school at 22 rather than in my late 20’s. I still would've been laser focused on school but after being out of school for so long I’m about as focused as DMX is about trying to stay out of jail.

The crazy thing is that I’m not even taking a full course load but with this class I’m taking and a full time job. I feel crazy, not sexy or cool… just plain crazy.  School was so much easier when I was in undergrad, it was my main focus. That and getting to the bar before midnight and the $1 tequila sunrises went back to regular price.  Now it’s not just school anymore, its meetings, deadlines, paying bills, and a whole bunch of other shit. It’s having a damn job… pulling all nighters and getting up to go to work at 6am is not what’s up.  When I pulled all nighters in undergrad I just had to get up and go to class, and if I had breaks in between I would go back the dorms and take a nap or sleep in the library. That’s a non-option at work, sleep where?? In the bathroom… yeah okay.  I’m not going to lie its been a little rough going back to school and having a full time job. I got off to a kinda rough start, which wasn’t exactly my fault. That’s another story for another day, however what happened really doesn’t matter because at the end of the day its my name on those grades and nobody else’s…. so there’s that.  I’ve gotten a little better with getting the hang of things lately, but I still feel overwhelmed with school at times. It’s definitely put a damper on my somewhat interesting social life but hey I know it’s for my own good but still I really hate school at times.

I have no idea how people with families (spouses and children) go back to school and work full-time. I’m more stressed out than Roseanne after they announced there wasn’t going to me any more Twinkies produced.  I just have a constant list of things that I need to do and sometimes shit gets done other times it doesn’t. So how a person balances all of this with kids, I'm not sure but I'm sure some type of narcotic is involved. God Bless them and can they pass out some Cliffnotes on how this happens.  

I will say this though the course I’m taking has definitely given me a better understanding of the field I’m in. This aint no fluff course, I feel more knowledgeable about problems that arise at work, so I guess that’s a good thing. I’m not working my ass off and pulling out my hair at times for some useless bs that I’m never going to use in my career. So here’s to looking forward for school being out for summer.