now come w/it.

i sang in the Sunbeams (youth choir) at 1st Baptist Church of Maplewood (Missouri) for 4 yrs from age 8 to 12. i was a soloist. (i used to could sing, y'all). i attended church each and every Sunday, choir rehearsal on Thursday (used to miss "Cosby" b/c of it!), and home Bible class on Wednesday. plus there was Vacation Bible School in the summers. oh, and Sunday School every Sunday morning where-in i was quite the scholar. so my Black Church card has all its holes punched. not to mention i just paid my American Nigger dues.

so what's up?

Affy didn't say the Black church has no cred...he said white Rock artists borrow from its traditions to give their work a certain credibility. think they don't? really? he also said current Black R&B artists are quick to lean on the church to give their careers some cred. he suspects, as do i, not that folks don't sing in the churches anymore...but that the music they release is more concerned w/sounding like Star Search than sounding like Greater New Bethel Rock Full Gospel AME Church of God In Christ Fellowship Holiness Temple. Beyonce is the penultimate example of this new phenomenon. i saw the same episode of "Driven" that Fire saw and i saw Kelly, Yonce, and them other ones doing singing/dancing drills ON CAMERA as lead by Mama and Papa Knowles. to me that meant from day 1 those girls were concerned w/being stars...not w/being 'authentic'. Yonce didn't pay her dues in a choir stand...she paid them in that basement in front of that video camera. and she paid them running miles everyday while singing...that was on camera too. those basement sessions shaped her singing much more than any choir rehearsal. if she sang in church it was a sidenote...her real concern was Star Search. (oh, and btw...she made it to Star Search.)

what's really going on here?