I have to say that I am rather disappointed in black feminism right now.
While the black intelligentsia we're pulling up a seat at the table for some lemonade with the trendy Knowles clique, they completely ignored one of the most unapologetically black, bold, sex-positive and ingenious albums to drop in 2016 from one of our most revolutionary female artists—3D Na’Tee’s, The Regime. Don’t get me wrong, A Seat at the Table is the every bit the cultural masterpiece that it’s touted to be but I just need my unapologetic blackness to come with way more teeth.
The Regime is an album that empowers those of us who’ve had to process our feelings of anger, frustration and self-doubt without a strong healthy support group, resources for proper mental health care, space for self-care or enough ends to remove ourselves and decompress.
A brief intro to 3D Na’tee for the uninitiated: she will eat your favorite rapper’s fucking lunch. Hypothetically, if a younger, less composed Na’tee had it on her mind to touch Jigga up in an elevator, she wouldn’t have just annoyed him. She would’ve given him flashbacks to his Jazzy days… just sayin’.
The foremost pundits of black culture have consistently looked over Na’Tee’s prolific contribution to the diverse narrative of the black female experience. This, probably due to her plain yet viciously lyrical and visceral language but Solange is endlessly praised for being just erudite enough to appeal to a "certain class of Negro". The struggle isn’t always beautiful. Sometimes it’s nasty as fuck. Na’tee released her debut album on August 29, just shy over a month before Solange’s A Seat at the Table on September 30.
Na’tee, with ruthlessly keen and elemental precision, attacks the intersectionality of being poor, black and female in male-dominated spaces while bucking the implicit mandate of respectability that black female creatives are often saddled with. She’s intellectual but without any traces of pomposity. While I was dismayed by the lack of uproar from prominent black feminists, I cannot say that I was surprised—Na’tee has existed in the blind spot of elitist, new wave of cool kids for as long as she’s been spittin’.
Na’tee debuted the video for the revealing, emotionally raw and cathartic “Dear Father” in 2010 to no applause from the black feminist culture mob that seemed to be quite fixated on women of color creatively sharing stories of trauma. She premiered the video to her expertly written and gritty epic of black girlhood torn asunder, “Lil Kim” in July 0f 2012 without a peep from any one of our MANY forward-thinking black feminist notables. In March of 2013, she went up against Kendrick Lamar on Sways Universe. She BROUGHT THEM N*GGAS TO HIP-HOP CHURCH when Sway had the nerve to condescendingly suggest that Lamar offer her backstage passes based on her looks and not her undeniable talent. There was no critical breakdown of the way curvaceous black women aren’t taken seriously by our professional peers because of our sexuality. She dropped “Dear Mr. Zimmerman” days after the Trayvon Martin trial decision. Y'all woke mutha fuckas were still sleep. She dropped the powerful and moving “Who Can We Run To” in December of 2014 and the super literate, progressive, intellectual #BlackLivesMatter clique didn’t say SHIT (but “To Pimp a Butterfly” was “everything” though).
Just a few months ago my girl went on the BET Hip Hop Awards cypher as the underdog and A T E—nothing substantial to be heard from our black feminist culture authorities. Even Young MA, who also participated in the most recent BET Cypher as the only other female artist, is getting some decent public attention right now, but I believe that is mostly due to MA's pet appeal to black feminist culture as a queer WOC.
Track six of The Regime ,“Bad Bxtch with Good Intent” ALONE puts Solange’s seat at the kids table but not one critical analysis of the album was rendered. (Seriously… a word was delivered on that cut.)
Did I fail to mention that Na’Tee produces much of her own content in-house?
Na’Tee is a proudly independent artist who often remarks on the fact that she “took the harder route” by not letting labels take advantage of her talent, image or intellectual property. She controls not just her voice but also her sexuality. This is remarkable in itself considering the way that a.) the music industry, especially true in the hip-hop genre, tends to want to put a patriarchal stranglehold on representations of black female bodies and b.) she celebrates her nauseatingly (naturally) curvy figure on her own terms. Come through, ownership and agency!!! She’s an anomaly to everything we’ve come to expect from women who rhyme.
The Diva isn’t a noob either; the pursuit of hip-hop notoriety has been a lifelong effort for the New Orleans native. Despite her tenacity and work ethic however, she didn’t have an in-road to the music business. She didn’t have a family name to precede her. She wasn’t encouraged to have a voice. She comes from the population of black women who were meant to be left behind. Instead, Na’Tee worked tirelessly to change her own fate against the odds of being wholly disenfranchised in the same cold, snow white America that Solange has had the benefit of a leg up in through her burgeoning family legacy. Not to suggest that the Knowles family had it “easy” but they CERTAINLY enjoyed advantages that Na’Tee did not.
After pouring over Internet search results, I have yet to find even one piece that even addresses the overtly feminist themes layered into Na’Tee’s lyrics OR how her own rise to fame against the meanest of odds is a testament to the irrefutability of #BlackGirlMagic. VICE ran a wonderfully enlightening piece on Na’Tee’s hip-hop ambitions and her pioneering Jazz Festival hip-hop showcase, highlighting her impact and success as a black female rap artist, but the feminist implications weren’t addressed. (I respect that though as the writer probably knew he wasn’t necessarily equipped to tackle such an intricacy as black feminism in hip-hop.)
To be fair, maybe part of the reason why no one ever thought to tackle the strikingly womanist overtones of Na’Tee’s work is due to the fact that in hip-hop, a notoriously black male dominated arena unremorsefully prevalent with misogynoir, public declarations of feminist sensibilities are still something of a stigma for its female artists. I’ve never heard Na’tee say out of her own mouth that she’s feminist, womanist or any other “-ist” other than a lyricist and it’s my belief that doing so would only bring controversial (or worse divisive) attention to her brand. She’s already something of a black sheep due to her VERY vocal anti-industry, anti-establishment stance, so let me say outright that I do not intend to attribute a label of feminism on to Na’tee or her work. I’m merely interpreting her work through my own womanist lens as it resonates with me in such a social, political and cultural way.
But let me get back to my overarching statement—new wave black feminism has failed 3D Na’Tee and the women who identify with her.
“Black women scholars and professionals cannot afford to ignore the straits of our sisters who are acquainted with the immediacies of oppression in a way that many of us are not.” – Angela Y. Davis, Women, Culture and Politics
Nowadays, I hear so much talk of intersectionality and respectability politics and the toxic privilege of mainstream white feminism but the experiences of America’s broke, working class, non-degreed black woman still exist in the blind spot of even our own culture-forward movements. We’re consistently ignored by the people who claim to be our champions but much of that can be remedied by us taking up the banner for ourselves. We who don’t fit into the trendy, new mold of black womanhood have to declare ourselves more loudly. We need to more boldly elbow our way into the conversation without being intimidated by its perceived intellectual, social exclusivity. Although I am a comedian and quite the literary nerd, I was raised in south Louisiana among women who never openly displayed any revolutionary pro-black or feminist leanings. My world view wasn’t carefully constructed with a foundation of Nina and Angela and Nikki and Zora. I was led to them by my own radically womanist sensibilities and have been self-taught in their ways. I didn’t finish college. I don’t lead a particularly bohemian lifestyle in the fashionable sense. I don’t exist in within the confines of what is now the more stylish, en vogue, metropolitan representation of black feminism and neither does Na’Tee. She doesn’t stress the importance of black female self-care in any academic terms. She doesn’t advocate for black youth in a politically correct, agreeable way. She doesn’t share first-hand accounts of trauma, mental health issues or extreme poverty with any artsy flourishes. She’s direct, blatant and unyielding. Na’Tee is the voice of the “nasty” black woman that repulses and terrifies society and sadly the kind of woman contemporary black feminism patronizes, jeers at and overlooks.
But we still here, though.
Epilogue: And while we’re all here, let’s address the Knowles girls’ frequent subculture jacking for a minute. (Yes, Hive we are taking it there TUH-DAY.) I’m getting tired of the way those two are claiming Louisiana so hard lately just because their people are from The Boot (a good 2 hours away from N.O. at that).
Solange, who has taken it upon herself to adopt New Orleans culture as her own, conspicuously (and, in my humble opinion, in the same pretentious tradition as her sister’s “Formation”) peppered her album with soundbites from Master P. who hails from the same ‘hood as (Guess who, bitch?) 3D Na’tee. Here is one of his more powerful statements that was used on A Seat at the Table:
“Now, we come here as slaves, but we’re going out as royalty, and able to show that we are truly the chosen ones.”
No one woman making music right now embodies this statement (or black feminism for that matter) more than Na’Tee. In fact, she’s had a royalty theme woven into most of her recent works from Heavy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown to The Coronation to her latest, The Regime. She has long asserted that very same regality P alluded to. Furthermore, Na’tee knows all too well what being black and underprivileged in the city means. She can’t take it off and put it on when it suits her like a fashion statement. Na’tee IS New Orleans (and, baby, she reps HARD).
The Knowles girls don’t know this life. They don’t know what it feels like, what it looks like, what it sounds like or what it really means to be a disenfranchised, broke, black bitch in Louisiana. They’re wearing N.O. like a designer bag when what they need to do is rep Houston mutha fuckin’ Texas and keep it pushing. Get off our funky, jazzy, ratchet, culturally abundant sac and get your own shit.
That is all.
