How brilliant do you have to be to wear no clothes, and colored wigs?
"Doesn't she look brilliant?" /sarc
Posted on 05/26/2005 7:00:26 AM PDT by JarheadFromFlorida
In the fall of 2004, Greg Thomas, the professor of English at Syracuse University, drew his texts, not from Chaucer or Dickens, but the profanity-laden lyrics of Billboard magazine's rap charts: Thomas introduced a new course devoted to the study of “gangasta” rap starlet Lil’ Kim (Kimberly Jones). Accordingly, Thomas’s for-credit course, offered through the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse, was titled “Hip-Hop Eshu: Queen Bitch 101—The Life and Times of Lil’ Kim.”
The twenty-something Thomas saw much to admire in the hip-hop icon. In Lil’ Kim’s foul-mouthed repertoire, Thomas said he glimpsed a mind of uncommon profundity: “It’s the art with the most profound sexual politics I’ve ever seen anywhere,” he insisted. Even more than their sexual overtones, however, the Berkley-educated Thomas was taken by what he saw as the radicalism underlying Lil Kim’s obscenity-laden recordings. “It’s about her lyricism and the lyrical persona…new notions of sexual consciousness, sexual politics in her rhymes, how she deals with societies based on male domination in her rhymes and societies based on rigid gender categories and constructs,” he explained to the New York Daily News. Interviewed by ABC Radio, Thomas stressed that “[h]er lyrical artistry is nothing short of revolutionary.”
About the wisdom of basing an entire academic course on Lil’ Kim, Thomas had no doubt. Writing on the website allhiphop.com, Thomas boasted that his course “overturns male domination, lyrically, and rigid, homophobic gender identity on record—way more effectively than any elite Women’s or Gay & Lesbian Studies program in academia,” and rhapsodized that Lil Kim’s “whole system of rhymes radically redistributes power, pleasure and privilege, always doing the unthinkable, embracing sexuality on her kind of terms.” That most of these terms are unprintable in most respectable newspapers seemed to concern Thomas not at all.
On the contrary, Thomas was adamant that his course addressed a pressing dilemma: “How do we communicate the political absurdity of this brilliant Black female artist facing hard time in the age of George ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’ Bush, and all these corportate [sic.] lies?” The entire class, observed Thomas, “developed out of my ongoing research on race and sex in the context of empire.”
How brilliant do you have to be to wear no clothes, and colored wigs?
"Doesn't she look brilliant?" /sarc
I actually would attend this class. Probably wouldn't like my opinion BUT I've always been fascinated by Lil Kim.
Aw C'mon, don't you like Kimmie just a little? Hmmmmmm?
Actually, she's more of a good study of what happens when you abandon little girls and allow them to grow up in the street like a feral cat.
Now she a hardcore sista
And man her rhymes are phat
She sure can curse an' stuff
I like it when she struts like that
Now don' go sayin' this ain't art
If you dis her, I'll get my Nine
Long as I get college credit,
I'll be doin' fine.
Let me see...liberals ring their hands because we are supposedly losing our scientific edge to countires like India because of the No Child Act...ok.....
Looks more like a cheap trick to me. $20 dolla?
Clear,
Good one! You must have attended the class :) :)
Nah, how about "50 cent?"
Another idiotic waste of time at a major university.
Can't tell me schools are broke when courses like the
above are offered all the time at major universities.
Get rid of the fluff courses. That will cut down big time
on the costs of running a university.
Li'l Kim's li'l sister.
LOL!
I have heard multiple times that M&M, the candy coated punk, was a "Genius", by many people, all of whom are musical morons.
Well, that explains that.
She's deconstructing fashion sense, that's for sure.
Yep. And like a feral cat, you have to put up with the caterwauling while she's in heat.
Also a good example of what happens with too much plastic surgery.
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