"PLEASE CAN I HOLD THE MIC?": homegirl 3000 & THE PROBLEM OF NEOCOLONIAL GRACE (1/?)

To set the terms of our covenant:

1. This is a freeform rumination series dedicated to exploring how faith and grace impacts both self-determination and creative practice.
2. Unaccustomed to swimming, my legs gently push off the seabed to grant me height for air once more. I guffaw a wide swallow and gulp it down in the same motion. Yet, no jaw is capable of gulping the atmosphere hollow in a single breath. These ruminations thus exist as tiny pockets of air preserved when emerging from the abyssal, inchoate deep that I consider homegirl 3000. That is, an ongoing incubation.
3. I shall often appear and go as I will and/or deem necessary. One of my deepest flaws is that I've been trained to be a perfectionist. As such, please take me for my word or risk not hearing from me at all.

This article manifests in response to (de)cypher's interview with MAVI. Initially hosted on a tumblr blog that no longer exists, I have provided a preserved PDF copy of the article here.

What does it mean to be within grace as a west african transfem?
and what world do i illustrate to move with that grace

A GRAMMAR FOR NEOCOLONIAL GRACE

PLEASE CAN I HAVE THE MIC
CAN I HOLD THE MIC

Uh, bitch - can I hold the mic? - Don't - Please can I hold the mic? - You can't - I would like to say that, okay, I would like to say that...

I can't be a singular expression of myself, there's too many parts, too many spaces, too many manifestations, too many lines, too many curves, too many troubles, too many journeys, too many mountains, too many rivers, so many

Too many thoughts, too many feelings, too many manifestations...

• running from hip-hop to avoid being called a nigga.
  • but conversely a nigga doesn't have to be in the box of hip-hop to be a nigga ykwim
  • like an expansive/fluid feeling & definition of what YOUR blackness means
    • d'angelo & "neo-soul"
      • "i just make black music" i.e. he just draws from and remixes what is in the legacy of black music.
      • "just speaking through our dead homies"- tupac
  • and so we have an essentialism of what being a nigga in the current state of hip-hop/rap culture means. like most mfs will say that being a cis woman in the game, much less transfem, is a direct violation of rap's ideals.
    • but it''s just factually true at least for cis women that they have found their own lane in both hip-hop's history and current staying power (lil kim, gangsta boo, the superstar rise of megan the stallion rn)
    • and transfems are and have been making it true
      • which brings me to me lmao
  • but there's a lot about the "Swing state of hip-hop" where mavi assumes that shying away from that is a move towards respectability instead of a move for intentional distinction
    • but he's also talking about the political utility of having an audience of hip-hop enjoyers. the revolutionary qualities inherent in hip-hop's origins and many of its derivative styles & what it means as a MEDIUM
    • hip hop as the major societal educator for black youth in america
      • the limits of institutions trying to co-opt hip-hop based on its ability to speak directly towards children and inspire creative experimentation
      • "the arts is something that we really see that can change something into something else."
      • and really its a huge cornerstone of how we pass down CULTURAL knowledge. so it is a bedrock.
        • and i wouldn't even say i'm not part of this. so i am hip-hop, but i'm not JUST hip-hop. but also hip-hop isn't JUST anything. so i am and am always exceeding hip-hop, pushing at the edge of its walls.
          • type shit
    • distilling our truths and putting them into bite-sized, edible morsels. contributing your truth as a form of PROPAGANDIZING
      • "the music is fuel for the propaganda machine" -earl sweatshirt
• wtf is this politics shit
  • "working to elevate blackness to a level of political utility that elevate the quality of black life. that's what my politic is. doing black shit for black people to be able to do black shit."
    • periodt
  • "we need to be able to 'do' in the long term—you know what i'm saying? it needs to be a potable well."
    • black studies as that in an academic sense. to pick up, remix, n pass it on. keep the culture alive, whatever form it takes, cause another nigga's always gonna be able to use that shit in one way or another
    • keeping the flame alive
      • is grace having a shield around the flame? our palms smoldering yet protected by the help of something beyond our means?
  • sampling/recycling beats is that shit too. the reuse of the breakbeat. inventing lofi in the dmv. innovations in rnb. you can really flip a beat and rap over it in any way. and sampling is also what dj'ing is ykwim
    • "THE CO-INTELLEIGIBLITY OF LIKE, AT LEAST ALL AFRICAN MUSIC"
      • ternary and quaternary matrix
      • east coast and japanese hip-hop exchange
• GOD'S HAIR follicle and grace
  • crying & bleeding
    • "crying is more—like i'm not tryna bleed. i'ma die of old age, not a nick on me."
      • smallness in the cry. "like washing the inside of your face"
    • "everything in space is moving away from each other. at accelerating speeds."
      • fighting against the grain. "the smallest sliver of grace". shit is going bad, but that's only you. there's a larger scheme of grace. we just god's hair follicle.
  • grace as a concept being crucial in black folk's spirituality
    • without it, the world is UNINTELLIGIBLY evil.
      • unable to endure or push through. no mountaintop.
    • necessary to understand yourself as a core part in something greater.
      • "i might see a part of his sweater that god never seen before and through me he's experiencing it. and sometimes he might stop and through me marvel at his own work. that's grace."
• niggas moody but imbued with the funk
  • inherited that shit. "when somebody die, you gotta talk to them through prayer."
  • you also get all their shit. you inherit a lot of fly shit from mfs who aint here no more. sometimes you don't even know where it came from but you carry it on.
  • IT
    • the air that cracks between your joints. crying. going stupid at a show.
    • THE HOLY GHOST
      • possession
    • "and you get that from first having amazing elders and then, at a distance, i'm having amazing ancestors."
    • little fly shit. imagery. navi being a word eater
      • what's my fly shit?
      • derpy gospel girl signing the blues?
      • cameroonian heritage?
      • finding family? making something outta nothing from your existing somethings?
  • "need to listen real hard, because they really telling me some shit."
    • "and that's my only compass. we niggas, bro. we don't know where we from, we know who we from."
      • not knowing who but knowing their existence. faith in something else. but also being cameroonian means i know where in a sense, but the where is familially and geographically beyond me yk
  • "almost like the path is already laid out for you"
    • "it was just news to me. right? but it wasn't no crisis."
• copyright law v the black artists
  • "us copyright law is not in the black oral tradition"
    • "on some property law shit and we all know the origins of that."
  • language & (mis)translation
    • not a direct pipeline from the spirit outwards. it's already a mistranslation because its in this language
    • so there's a dispassion in how its received because there will always be mistranslations
      • especially in minute criticisms as a dissuader from engaging in the craft
      • "i know i'm hard, bro. and before this amount of people knew i was hard, when 5 people knew i was hard, i knew i was hard."

• My parents are hardcore West-African Catholics; the type that uses Christ more as a whipping cane than as a guide for salvation.

• That Catholic foundation used shame as a palpable tool to keep people in line. From a young age, Christ taught me the false reward of obedience - and the quiet threat of when you step out of line.

  • Sitting in Cameroon, sleeping in one of my auntie's houses while traveling to visit my brother's first year of dormitory school in Africa in midst of a farewell tour following my grandfather's passing .Lying in the darkness, pondering the threat of oblivion and hell. The grinding and wailing of teeth suffered as an aftermath for earthly passions entwined with a lack of divine groveling. Dreaming of inventing the firsttime machine so I can go to the garden of Eden and prevent the original humans from eating the forbidden fruit. Praying I could contain temptation and save everyone from themselves - including me.

• That threat becoming more palpable as time went on. Feeling the difference, the rift betwen ,y family members and I. Lack of social cues and the beginnings of alienation through a queerness that I supposedly embodied but couldn't recognize in myself. My aunties and uncles did. The sideway stares. The lonely sit downs. Besides myself from being so different.

  • Was I broken?

• Fpllowing leaving my parents, I suffered a long, hard look of defining myself in an immigrant community largely haunted by the shadow of neocolonialism embodied through the hompohobia, transphobia, and classism embedded in West African-American communities. how do I articulate grace and benevolence away from African Christendom. How do I locate a grammar forfulfillment of the self that is distinctly tied to my lineage without faling into the pitfals of indigenous erasure that I was encultured in?

• My divine is different from the white american divine, or an american divine at all.