Jalylah Burrell

Hello, Babar

Seattle-bred, Brooklyn-based cultural critic Jalylah Burrell riffs on anything and everything.

Don't sell yourself to fall in love & other truisms

Posted 12/10/2007 at 10:27 PM | Comment?

+New Year's Eve with Chris Rock at the Garden trumps just about every other option, excepting the dubious Dupri-orchestrated Jackson 5 reunion.

+PETA will clown: listing the Top Ten Vegetarian Friendly Prisons on the day of Vick's sentencing and building a snarky web site castigating the fur-friendly Olsen twins are just two examples.

+Your money will not absolve you. I've been long miffed by gratuitously trifling Black artists' "I Get Money" defense. Kindred soul fiend Nova Slim explains.

+Precipitation and pools don't just frizz Black women's relaxed, flat-ironed or roller-set coifs, but conked Black men's too. Look but to the doughy dandy Terrence Howard with his Colombian girlfriend Zulay Henao in Cancun. The sea water and sun got it looking a hair buckwheatish. Conks are not only unfashionable but impractical.

+Bob Marley (and later Wyclef) sang "in this great future, you can't forget your past" but given the chaotic state of my mom's hometown of Lagos, Nigeria, recently profiled by Current as the fastest growing city in the world, that is much easier said than done. See why I haven't ever been eager to visit:

+Addiction is a losing game and hopefully Amy Winehouse will realize that before anything tragic befalls her. Here is her newest video, "Love is A Losing Game", my favorite song from Back to Black:

+Amy Winehouse's template is and was Ms. Hill. Here is what I had to say of their similarities in January after seeing Winehouse perform at Joe's Pub in New York City:

On a recent critics poll, I listed her sophomore album Back to Black, available in the US as an import, as the best of 2006. It should officially drop here sometime in March. It's girl group for hip hop fans, lush, witty, explicit and really quite good. It's also familiar. Winehouse is (just) Lauryn Hill without the messianic commission. Insecurity, gruff sarcasm, and 'hood tats stand in for triumphant optimism. Where Hill's moralizing ultimately drove her towards something that looks like insanity (I don't think she's crazy), Winehouse presents herself as (maybe) having been crossed that bridge and her occasional instruction, unlike The Miseducation..., is all cynical ("Love is a losing Game"). She doesn't coo or woo and she won't save you from acrylics, yaky, medicants, or bad men. If Hill was "We Gon' Make It," Winehouse is 'what if we don't.' Source.

And there is some more Hill material bouncing around the net. I like this Re-Education of Lauryn Hill mixtape a lot. "The Makings of You" cover is choice. Even amidst the emotional turmoil conveyed, Hill, unlike the talented Winehouse, leaves me feeling hopeful.

+Be discriminating in your dating choices. I'm glad Chicago PD has a suspect, an aggressive ex, in the Nailah Franklin case but this dude's relationship track record as detailed in this Chicago Tribune story should have kept the women, including Franklin, way at bay. We women need to be able to recognize people for what they are. A crazy/deranged man is not ever a good look no matter how good looking. Martin expounds: