"Don't I Deserve to be Privileged?" - A Thread for Jazmine Sullivan

The last half of this record is so much fun!!!

The last track is really great

http://littledreadridingwood.tumblr.com/post/116974587951/charismablu-my-d1vineright

is there aaaaaaany in-depth writing on this album at all

"mascara" and "brand new" are worthy of longform essays EACH

hey man I wanted 800 words

there's always dev hynes's review lol

the show last night was so good and i wish i had double the space for it

she's so fucking solid live

btw
http://www.cityparksfoundation.org/event/summerstage-rca-summer-concert-celebration-featuring-jazmine-sullivan-jordan-bratton-more/

is there aaaaaaany in-depth writing on this album at all

"mascara" and "brand new" are worthy of longform essays EACH

― lex pretend, Tuesday, April 21, 2015 4:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, I actually wrote a longform essay on Mascara back in January. It's in Norwegian though so good luck trying to read it.

http://www.dagbladet.no/2015/01/26/kultur/vers/musikk/37333714/

ha i had no idea you were norwegian. i might resort to google translate at some point

google translate makes my head hurt so no need. i only wanted to point out that SOMEONE had indeed written just that.

don't suppose you'd like to give a go at translating to english here?

Translating it all from scratch would take too long but if I can find the time I'll try to put some makeup on the google translate version.

don't we deserve to be priviligert?

i heard "brand new" on the radio yesterday :D there was a recording of her introducing it as the new single too

best song of the decade.

Literally every word and inflection is fucking perfect on this album, every detail blows me away

She is opening for Sam Smith at an outdoor Arena/theatre near DC tonight but sadly several media announcements for the show do not even mention her.

where's the video for brand new ?

She's currently pushing "Let It Burn".

http://www.vulture.com/2016/02/toughest-song-i-wrote-jazmine-sullivan-brand-new.html
http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2016/02/05/05-brand-new-kendrick-lamar.nocrop.w529.h746.jpg

I still want to keep growing as a songwriter for as long as I can. This isn't it for me. It doesn't feel like I've arrived just yet.

i love her

i feel like the second verse of "brand new" is even better than anything kendrick would have contributed, but i also want to hear this putative remix!

i also have no idea whether he'd go apologetic or battle-of-sexes confrontational, but either way, jazmine's original tells the woman's story fully, and the male response should def be a part 2 rather than built into that

i too would love hearing kendrick on a remix, but sadly i think she has been quietly pushed from mainstream r&b radio to adult r&b radio over the course of this album cycle, where i think such a thing wouldn't take. obv we have discussed the difficulties black women in r&b (and in general) face in the mainstream lately so it seems like the older audience who wants to hear "let it burn" (as they should -- great song!) is where the industry will keep her slotted for some time :\

i remember hearing "brand new" on the mainstream r&b/hip-hop station here a couple times, complete with a recording of jazmine introducing it, but sadly they stopped playing it before long and now the only place i hear her is on the adult station that has "let it burn" in strong rotation

at both of her 2016 NYC plays (including a free concert with a 5k+ showing and a fairly expensive $40 ticket that sold out about 2.5k), both shows provided an unofficial but consistent demographic: Jazmine's audience is certainly but not drastically older than the mainstream hip hop/R&B radio demographic (heavy on the 20/early 30 somethings), more women than men (maybe a 70/30 split), lots of queer signifiers among the male audience members and a fan base dominated by more than 90% people of color.

It's worth noting that her fans are not casual fans; the crowd was going crazy every time she directly addressed them, did a costume change or tried something new with a song. They were as enthusiastic about cuts from the first album as the new album. She's endowed with the "1000 True Fans" curse/blessing: she'll be able to make a comfortable living as an artist doing it more or less the way she wants to for the rest of her career but unless she kowtows to the market, she's unlikely to have a genre-crossing megahit anytime in the next decade.

yeah, that's what i've seen on the few times she's been to the uk, and it applies to a large proportion of my own personal fav artists. i'm not that mad about jazmine not smashing on the charts, i'm mad that she really doesn't get her critical due - or at least, critics seem to ultimately love her but editors don't commission them to write about her. reality show got hardly any critical ink in 2015 and then placed surprisingly high on p&j, and of course there's the grammy nom. but where is the coverage? ok, there's a bit, but she should be talked about alongside kendrick.

I just remembered I haven't listened to this album in three weeks.

There's an interview with Pitchfork up as well! Shame it's not a part of the "main" site though where I assume more people might see it. http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1016-jazmine-sullivan-on-songwritings-labor-of-love/

WTF at that crank yankers video for dumb

That was pretty much the audience breakdown when I saw her in Philly too though it seemed to be a bit younger slanted. I looooove that Pitchfork piece, and I just realized that mural is on my way to work and I have never seen it!!

also does an unedited version of "Reality Show" even exist?? every copy I've heard has a bunch of (but not all???) of the *choice words* backmasked. Is this a thing that ppl do?

it's um, up on spotify.

I haven't fully gone through the curses but my sense is that she mutes them or not for dramatic/character effect

oh i see what you're talking about wrt 'Brand New'
yeah, i think you're right lex; compare to '#hoodlove' where such niceties are quickly dropped.

same with "b___ don't kill my vibe" on Mascara

ha i wondered this for ages re: the editing

reminds me of being unable to find a completely unedited version of the miseducation of lauryn hill back in the day

i just filed a profile of jazmine; i hung out with her at her mom's place

whoa rad

Rad, please link when its up?

Awesome! Are the grammys the sole reason for all of this recent promo or is she just finally getting the spotlight she has long deserved?

i think it's the grammys

in that case hoping to see some more writeups of kehlani and the internet!

here you go :)

https://www.redbulletin.com/us/us/culture/jazmine-sullivan-is-rbs-new-queen

nice piece Maura!
i love this moment from the live version of "Forever Don't Last"; when she does this, it's so clear that she acts as a very real avatar for a meaningful portion of her audience that doesn't often hear their voice on the radio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeIg6BaEDbg#t=2m23s

bah, got the embed wrong, jump to 2.19

Definitely agree. I felt it when I saw her in Boston last year, too.

great piece maura :)

thank you lex :) talking to you on saturday helped crystallize a lot of its bits in my mind!

Sounds like a flip of xscape who can I run to

Or Jones girls I guess originally

last night at the BET Awards she did a performance of "On It" with Ari Lennox and while it wasn't as great as her Soul Train Awards performance it was still excellent to see them singing about women's sexual pleasure on their terms. I know we've had twenty years of Lil Kim and so on, so explicit and raunchy isn't a big deal, but I think to see stuff performed with no "gimmicks" etc is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dr8LmhjiYU