What is Freedom? A critique of Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim. (HHAW Write-Off)May 18 '05 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line read it. Madtheory instructed us to use the theme of freedom for this year’s entries into the Hip-Hop Appreciation Week. I think what is interesting to me about the concept of “freedom” is that we think of it as something that is given to us, not something that we must take ourselves. We fundamentally, as black people, as lovers of hip-hop, as Americans, have extreme difficulty understanding how our choices inform how “free” we really are, or can be. Is a rapper really free if he has to use a Timbaland beat on his album when he is capable of making one himself? Is it freedom because he has the access to such an expensive beat in the first place? Is it free to own an imprint that you can staff and sign vibrant new artists to if the truth is that everyone who works for you really works for the parent company and you only own the letterhead? In the interest of discussing choice and how it relates to freedom (and also, how representations relate to freedom), I’ve decided to make a critical study of the careers of Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim. Both women arrived on the scene at relatively the same time. Both women gave the impression that they were self-made women, with images that they either (depending on when you asked them) created or approved. Both women had formidable skills. And perhaps most interestingly, both women had mentors who are perhaps the two most purely gifted (all things being equal) MCs of their generation. I think that as both women made choices more independently (for Kim after Biggie was murdered, for Foxy after Jay foolishly “traded” her in for Amil) the public perceptions of who they were changed drastically. In the case of Kim, she was revered for her increasingly narrow depictions of sexuality and mob-inspired violence. Foxy Brown was and is critically ignored (both commercially and in the “hood”) as she embraced a more well-rounded and introspective persona that (seemingly) jived with who she was when she first dropped. Kim’s cartoon sexuality (shown to greatest effect in her somewhat depressingly iconic portrayal in the atrocious remake of LaBelle’s Lady Marmalade) allowed her to enter into the upper echelon’s of white society while Foxy’s gradual personal growth shown over her middle albums, Chyna Doll and Broken Silence, signaled for the mainstream something less commercially viable. Kim’s image is lauded ad nauseam. Rolling Stone capped off its 2000 review of Notorious K.I.M. with But Lil' Kim still has an admirably tough and nasty mouth on her, and it's good to hear a Queen Bee sting. This is notable for its (supposed) cleverness and for the flippant way with which she is summed up (“tough and nasty”). More interestingly, in the Times, Ann Powers wrote of the same album in 2000, It's a mixed-up, cynical vision of female empowerment, but Lil' Kim clearly believes in it. Powers is smart to call out that strain of feminism that says that real power lies in aping the masculine stance but does little to really connect this statement directly to the source of Kim’s appeal in our patriarchal society. With Foxy Brown, the perceptions of her work and who she is are much different. Rolling Stone never even bothered reviewing any of her work. And on All Music Guide, she gets backhanded compliments like this for Broken Silence, Yes, Foxy Brown is street and she is the center of her world's rumor mill, but this album, ripe with tasteless materialism, explicit sexual references, and violent raps, can honestly be called a musical step forward, and is a compelling testament to the life of a girl from the hood. This is evident in the perceptions of Foxy’s records as commercial and critical failures. The truth that Kim and Foxy both have lost some ground commercially is never said. But the perception by the mainstream is that Kim is an icon and Foxy is always and only her (less talented, less attractive) rival. More important is the music that fueled these perceptions. Hardcore introduced Lil’ Kim as a woman who so clearly saw her route to power through the aping of patriarchal roles of behavior (i.e. mafia images, man as sex objects, etc). It is subversive to flip gender roles in the way Kim (and to a lesser extent, Foxy too) does, but it is only so effective in liberating women. All that happens is that women behave in a patriarchal way like men and men are then objectified. This is still a dominating ideal and it’s still unhealthy. And interestingly, Kim never finds enabling ways of reinvisioning her role as a patriarch. She merely parrots existing tropes (i.e. listing off men she wants to sleep with in Dreams and mob violence in Mafia Land). Not Tonight is one of the few truly subversive moments because in it Kim’s agency comes from her controlling her sexuality. Her subsequent albums continued this theme in more and more cartoonish fashion. Notorious K.I.M. was touted as being an aping of Biggie’s style and ironically there are no real songs that give you a glimpse into what it must have felt like to loose the love of your life. It is all lip service. Much of La Bella Mafia is more of the same. While her musical choices radicalizes (she even sings a la R. and the use of The Lost Boys on Tha Jumpoff is her first purely fun and creative song since Hardcore) her themes in lyric are relatively the same over the three albums. Lil Kim’s changing image belies a monumental insecurity that is often only paid lip service to. Much the way Michael Jackson is imprisoned by his own past and skewed self-perception, Lil’ Kim has made a career out of exploiting her insecurity. She revels in the new breasts and pals around with Donatella Versace extolling the virtues of blond hair. Since blond hair is a signifier of “whiteness” in our society, she’s seen as a good black girl who recognizes her place in society and gets her small piece of the pie. Foxy Brown is a much different story. Her work evolved in a much different way. Ill Na Na was famously a result of record label tampering. Def Jam knew it could sell Foxy. They didn’t, however, believe she (at just 16) could sell herself. So they had Jay-Z write the bulk of the material. The songs she wrote herself, particularly her Havoc collabo, The Promise were very much the same kind of thing Kim was doing. Her follow-up, Chyna Doll plays like the worst kind of compromise. Equal parts commercial club songs and gritty introspection, it serves as a peak into the complex mind of who Foxy Brown is becoming. With My Life, we begin to see how self-aware Foxy Brown is. And with It’s Hard Being Wifee we see Foxy’s struggle with traditional female roles and negotiating just how she should behave and react in a relationship to outside pressure. But this all pales in comparison to the striking self-confidence that she displays on Broken Silence. Foxy's flow switches up, she starts of the album with introspection and carries it through. More importantly, she embraces her dark skin (on Candy). It's a complete change from the Ill Na Na era when she was always trying to lighten her skin. Foxy's very public struggle with maturing and growing into finding herself is documented in her work on this album. Which one is truly free? Are they both free because they have a public platform in the first place? I’d argue that neither is truly free because freedom is an ongoing process. But the public perception of Lil’ Kim as the better MC, the better "woman," the bigger star has a lot to do with the constructed image she seems so reluctant to break from. When Foxy Brown changed up her style, flow and subject matter, she lost a large portion of her audience and critical acclaim. In fact, Def Jam refused to release Ill Na Na 2: The Fever, yet another departure for Ms. Marchand, because they didn't know how to market it. They didn't think it had a single. The album continues the rather brave move by Foxy to find her own voice, her own flow, her own self through her music. Even on the obligatory sex song that was requested by the higher ups that is tacked on at the end of the album, one gets the impression that Foxy is past this stage in her life, that she is bored. It’s effortlessly done, but it all sounds like she’s just not into it. The same can be said for Lil’ Kim. She has never sounded as uninspired as she does on her last two albums. She can spit the lame sex and mafia rhymes in her sleep…and it sounds like she does. But she lacks the desire, it would seem, to change her image. In an interview with bell hooks, Kim is so cynical that it deeply saddens bell hooks. . . . The fact is, you know, when I interviewed Lil' Kim - this is before she got so out of control [laughter] - she came with her diamonds and her furs, and she's a beautiful young woman who's allowed herself to be mutilated by white supremacist aesthetics, but when we talked together, I asked her about love in her life. She must have been around 19 at the time. She said 'Love? What's that? I don't know any love.' It really penetrated deep in my soul. Here is this black girl from a dysfunctional working class family and if she plays her cards right she may be a multi-millionaire by the time she's thirty. She may have all matter of things, but all she can say when it comes to love is 'What's that?' And then a few years later she's wearing a blonde wig looking like a cartoon character letting the medical industry cut up her breasts. And we say what's love got to do with it? And then later, she sums up Kim: Donning blond wigs and getting a boob job so that she can resemble a cheap version of the white womanhood she adores wins her monetary success in the world of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism and helps her cover up the fact that she has no self-worth. These are important critiques because to few people will say this about Lil’ Kim. She’s either a joke because of it (like the running gags about her attire and the Diana Ross tittie pat) or she’s held up as some 21st century feminist ideal. But the pain that underlies Kim is never articulated in her art. The perception of Foxy Brown as a lesser artist has everything to do with her willingness to break free of the patriarchal bonds that hold her. Jay-Z may have left her behind, but she used that (probably painful) act to embolden herself to define her career on her own terms. Her very public fights with the men who run her career are a shining example of a young woman fighting against that male hand that says what a woman can and can not do. She too equates liberation with a quest for male power, but she seems willing to rebuke herself (as when she says rather poignantly in My Life, If he ain't care, why should they?/For this 'high price' life, it's the price I pay). Foxy Brown rarely gets reviews or serious criticism or attention. No major publications like Rolling Stone ever review her or interview her. True freedom lies in a person’s willingness to break free of systems of domination. Simply calling attention to injustice or sexism is not, in and of itself, truly revolutionary. One must go that next step to really change those systems, even if it’s only for oneself. Foxy Brown and Lil Kim have an inordinate amount of attention and fame and they both chose to deal with what it means to be black and female in different ways. Kim parrots the racist ideal of womanhood through lightening her skin, increasing her bust size and wearing blond wigs. Foxy increasingly appears with less and less makeup and seems to struggle with her adoration of European fashion and her Brooklyn roots. Her embrace of her Island heritage may strike some as Johnny Come Lately, but the gradual process of self-discovery naturally leads people back through their ancestors. How genuine it is up for debate, but Foxy is willing to go to that place and search. It’s no secret why Kim is more celebrated, we just don’t talk about these things in America. We don’t talk about why a woman refuting her blackness is a media darling and another who is more vocal about who she wants to be (even if she hasn’t figured out who that is yet) is marginalized. It is not as simple as comparing who is the better MC. Both have made just as much good as bad material and that’s not what moves the market. Talent really only gets you to the door. The freedom with which you open that door, work the room, and own as much of yourself as you did when you walked in when you walk out is the real ruler. Both women exert agency, but Kim doesn't seem to be much interested in changing or growing in her subject matter. Foxy doesn't have the luxury of the kind of autonomy that Kim has, but she wrests what she can and makes the records (mostly) that she wants. There is something to be said for both approaches. But who is really free?  |
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