The Three: August 2022 Edition
This month, I wrote about affirmations in online culture and how that's shaping our music, Beyonce's amazing Renaissance and Fireboy's newest.
So good to be writing this, having finished my MA Thesis and my Masters program (YAY! send champagne!). I’m catching up on sleep and non-academic writing. Thanks for subscribing and for sharing. Let’s get to it, shall we? Previous editions here and here.
On Affirmations and The Renaissance of “I’m Too Sexy”
When ‘I’m too Sexy’ first became a fun party song from the 90s, I don’t think even Right Said Fred themselves knew they were making what would become an enduring hit. The song is playful praise song for the self that satirises the self-image of beautiful supermodels and their set of the 90s who modelled both super-fashionable clothing by the world’s best designers and an outsized confidence in their own desirability. Over an upbeat instrumental, the lyrics are sung – if you can call it that – in a voice that sounds like someone’s awful pretentious Barry White impression after having smoked too many cigarettes. It takes neither itself nor its audience very seriously, and it is very much the kind of song you’d sing in a solo dance party at home with your hairbrush as a microphone.
There’s been a bunch of samplings of the Right Said Fred original in the 2010s, most notably for me was back in 2018 when the rapper YG interpolated ‘Too Sexy’ for his song ‘Too Cocky’. Drake who understands popular music like no one else and has soundtracked so many pop culture moments interpolated ‘I’m Too Sexy’ over a trap beat by Future and Young Thug. More recently, ‘I’m Too Sexy’ was interpolated over a Chicago-style house music beat and blessed by Beyonce herself in ‘Alien Superstar’ for her latest Renaissance album.
If one considers the content of much of what counts as pop music and what we see on our social media feeds, the tongue-in-cheek positive self-talk of ‘I’m Too Sexy’ fits right in with the popularity of bigging oneself up with affirmations and positive self-talk. Social media is full of spins on this kind of content, which likely began as spin-offs from the celebration of the girl-boss and then the self-care subgenres of social media female-centric content. Also related to its rise is likely protection against one’s predilection to comparing one’s reality to others’ Instagram-ready highlight reel. The female and sometimes queer skew of a lot of this positivity content also makes sense, because these are groups that often have to create communities to mobilize, organize and, yes, affirm themselves while living in larger societies that have laws and regulations that do not fully affirm them. The fabulous confidence of many content creators who peddle positivity can be armor for fortifying oneself against the headwinds that one faces beyond the walls of one’s safe spaces, or it can be just a way of celebrating oneself in defiance of the box that society tries to put one in.
Currently, there are well over 100 apps dedicated to affirmations all over app stores. Seriously, I counted and stopped at 107 and many of them indeed skew towards female audiences. There are popular TikToks and IG reels of people saying humorous and sincere affirmations to themselves. There are people whose entire social media schtick is to declare that they will only deal with “good vibes only” forever and ever amen. We seem now to have no use for self-deprecation, other people’s “bad vibes”, as we are admonished to think good thoughts, take no shit from anyone, exude joy and live soft lives. Positive self-talk is very much “the moment”.
My theory is that a lot of what we see in the stubborn optimism – or what I’ve also seen less flatteringly called “toxic positivity” – is in large part because of the increasing secularity of our culture. Religion used to hold a space for more of us where we were affirmed by the exceptionality of the group of our belonging, with texts that we would refer to for affirmations and admonitions sent from on high to guide us through our lives. It also provided more of us with spaces to be vulnerable with our fears and our near-misses and even celebrate our joys with testimonies to God’s goodness.
More and more, people are finding these places of belonging in more secular online spaces. In much the same way religious spaces both encourage you to put on a stubborn “it is well” face for the outside world while also creating room for you to crumble within its walls, these online secular spaces both provided spaces for us to be brashly confident and always happy while also giving us the [illusion of] safety to show and share in our vulnerability.
If affirmations resonate enough for us to download apps and feverishly save and share content containing them, then they will be popular enough to cross over into other forms of media – and they have. We see this with music made by women especially, but not exclusively. The main difference between the positive self-talk that megastar female artists like Lizzo and Beyonce engage in and the bragging that most male rappers do is that the former seem to take pains to also have self-talk that non-crazy-wealthy women can relate and actually aspire to. For male rappers (I think it’s slightly different from female rappers) the fantasy in the distance between your life and theirs is the point. For people like Beyonce and Lizzo, in between the talk of Balenciaces and Tiffany jewelry, there is also like “I woke up like this”, “I love myself, goddamn!”, “I’m a queen but I don’t need no crown”, and “it’s bad bitch o’clock, it’s thick-thirty” that you do not need to live their life to aspire to.
Seeing the enthusiasm with which Beyonce’s affirmation and positivity-heavy new album Renaissance has been received has made me think anew about community and what brings people together today. Beyonce has essentially become a pop culture deity by learning how to elevate herself by making other people feel seen and their experiences elevated. In Renaissance, she turns her gaze to Chicago house and black queer ballroom culture, deftly engaging the lingo and the mood of these spaces, modeling their joy, confidence and radical declarations of self-acceptance and self-love. It is a perfect dance album in the sense that while it is entirely upbeat, songs like ‘Energy’, ‘Church Girl’, ‘Plastic Off the Sofa’ provide needed contrast in mood, an ebb and flow while allowing the record to be cohesive. With songs like ‘Cozy’ where she says things like “she’s cozy in her skin/might I suggest you don’t mess with my sis” or Church Girl where she speaks of a young girl who is “not tryna hurt nobody/she’s just doing the best that she can” you can imagine for a second that she’s talking about you, and about us, so when she tells you to “shake it like a thottie” you might actually get off your ass and do it. This record creates a space where you could hold that confidence and acceptance and positivity to the light, watch the ways it refracts and reflects against their skin, and imagine how resplendent it will this self-love, joy and confidence will look on you.
Self-love, self-acceptance and self-care are reactions to the way that capitalism renders us machines of desire that are forever unsatisfied, always wanting more, more, more. I am not interested in a liberation that focuses only on myself; Toni Morrison teaches us that we cannot “self” our way to freedom, not least because the very essence of our freedom is to free others. But a community is made of selves, and how beautiful would it be if we all had cups full of affirmations to pour from.
Fireboy Does It Again
Fireboy has done it again. If you’re paying attention, you can’t be surprised. Right from his modern classic ‘Laughter, Tears, and Goosebumps’ debut album which had no features, to Apollo and now Playboy you get a sense that Fireboy has always been more focused on his own sound and showcasing himself and his range than about chasing a trend. He wants to be on top, but he wants to do it in his own way. Thinking of his music – from LTG to now – it’s hard to miss the growth, but you see that he’s very much the same artist. Where Apollo was experimental, Playboy does a good job of showing his range while mostly sticking to a sound. The world-dominating ‘Peru’, both the original and the remix with Ed Sheeran, are both on the album, but I am happy to report it’s not even in my top five. ‘Bandana’ features the excellent Asake in his trademark self-harmonizing choir on the hook and looks back on the journey in music so far. ‘Timoti’ is probably my favorite song on the record right now (this is very much subject to change) because it encapsulates for me what Fireboy says the record is – about a man who is at ease with the gift of his current moment of his success. Songs like ‘Afro Highlife’, ‘Havin Fun’ and ‘Glory’ recall that Apollo era Fireboy who is always willing to try out new sounds. It’s the same guy, just… even better. He is definitely here for a very long time, and I’m all for that.
Also: I’m just now checking out Ehiz’ interview with Fireboy on the album on Apple Music’s Africa Now which I think just dropped. Interesting so far.
What Else I’m Listening To
In terms of other music I’m enjoying right now, I’m really loving NSG’s newest ‘In Da Car’, which is also a play on “indica”. I definitely laughed at some of the lyrics but honestly, we don’t get many solid French-English collabos these days. I enjoyed this.
I’ve been looking forward to Magixxx’ new EP for a minute, because I love his voice and I wanted to get a fuller sense of what his music actually was. ‘Love Don’t Cost a Dime’ with Ayra Starr did well and of course he did good on that Mavin Records Allstars song ‘Overdose;, but there’s nothing like a small body of work to really introduce an artist. I wouldn’t say the record is “bad” but they could literally have been sung by anyone. It felt like listening to an EP of nondescript pop songs you might hear when on hold for customer service. I still think he’s promising, though; he has time to find his sound. I just don’t think this is it.
Lastly, I’m a huge fan of Julz’ work, and absolutely loved his Sounds of My World album that he dropped last year. He’s just hit refresh and dropped the Sound of My World Deluxe, adding seven – SEVEN! – new songs. A feast.
Until next time.