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Then, for extra credit, peep the excellent 2009 video clip that Erykah admitted “inspired” it, Matt & Kim’s “Lessons Learned”:

Black women’s bodies are ALL through rap videos, but their voices are muted. Interchangeable, silent bodies are how American Black women are presented to the world, globally, in music videos, by and large.

Think about it like this. If you watch Beyonce’s

Video Phone you may feel interested in the costumes and the dance moves. However, watching Window Seat you feel propelled forward. #blackgirlsarefromthefuture. Full stop. You sit there wantig to know what happens next. The distinction is the level of both intimacy and vulnerability that one performance has that the other lacks.

As I watched Erykah Badu, I thought of all the semi-nude and might as well be nude women in rap videos whose names we will never know, and if we don’t know their names, why should we care about them and who they are.

And don’t give me that “no one is putting a gun up to their head” to be in a video shit. People Love saying that, but d boys that sell crack “just need to feed they daughter.” Miss me with those. Our choices are limited to our options.

“Our choices are limited to our options.” – TRU DAT!

What’s so dope about Erykah’s shows is the motley audience she attracts.  I’ve been to Badu concerts with my mama, my white homegirl, Rachel, and the homie Maegs (a crunchy role model if there ever was one).  And we’re all there for different reasons.  Some are waiting for “Tyrone.”  Others want Badu the revolutionary.  Many more wait for Badu to articulate their heart break with a cappella version of “Green Eyes.”  Everybody, on some level, fucks with Badu, but how many of us have learned to fuck with all of Badu?   We are reluctant to accept her evolution–hence the tattoo.  Yes, we love “Window Seat,” but don’t we hate “Jump up in the Air” just because Weezy was on it, and not because his verse was lightweight disappointing?

Above all, the assassination at the end of “Window Seat” reminds me of Badu’s generation of soul singers, their survival, and our roles in their symbolic, public deaths: Maxwell (he didn’t disappear for all those years just because he wanted a vacation, I’m sure), D’Angelo, Lauryn.  Near that pantheon is Dave Chappelle, and perhaps to a lesser extent Aaron McGruder.  What Badu’s video harkens, for me at least, is some of her peers’ efforts to fully express their artistry, themselves as individuals.  That, of course, is an implicit suicide mission, resulting in public assassination and their subsequent disappearance.  (What happens if the puppet decides to cut its own strings?)  The public, then, is left with nothing to do but masticate on conspiracy theories.  We endlessly speculate on the how’s and why’s of Lauryn’s mental state and D’Angelo’s junkie status.  And in the process of investing in this myth (of the neo-soul, conscious icon) we kill them, and their humanity…softly.

Maybe Erykah is magical.  She survives.  She time travels.  She dies; we witness her rebirth.  She endures in ways her peers haven’t without, in my understanding of her, compromising in the way that others do.  (Will the real Common please stand up?)  It’s fascinating to watch an artist maintain her integrity in public.  Makes me want to jump up in the air–and stay there.

loved that last line – “fascinating to watch an artist maintain her integrity in public.” America, and indeed mankind, usually can’t deal with that shit.

Groupthink and Mob Mentality INDEED!