AS Women in dancehall, they’re the nucleus of it. They get the thing going and really keep it going. I wanted look at what they brought to dancehall and what they brought to me.
MJ A ‘Dancehall Queen’ is a woman, feminine expression and creativity. I remember how pissed off a lot of the women were when hip hop started to really infiltrate dancehall style, because people started to not wear dancehall fashion. Everybody wanted to look like Lil’ Kim or Aaliyah. There was a sense of one era ending, and I’m not sure everybody was that happy about it. It meant dancehall was just sort of subduing its identity into hip hop.
AS You mean when everyone started to gravitate from a dressmaker to a name brand? Aaliyah was an American thing. Lil’ Kim said she saw something from a dancehall video with the colours, but she definitely made her own thing of it, digesting it into her own sense of dress. From the outside, dancehall was looking for way to economise on itself and latched onto bigger things that were making money because there was no financial support.
In the dancehall, they really put their best foot forward. I got the other side of that, where I don’t want to look like like money. We are at a point where there’s third and fourth generation Nigerians, and a lot of young people are not aware they can start referencing themselves or their parallel communities. And as time goes on, that’s going to be a bit easier to do.
MJ Black self-possession applies not just to dancehall culture, but any sort of culture. Hilton Als mentioned that while yes, Martin Luther King got arrested, he got getting arrested wearing a three-piece suit. That when the haters come or when whoever come, I’m going to be in possession of myself, which also includes looking good.