I also now understood that artistic failure was an essential and educational aspect of doing great work. In a culture that craves quick results, mistakes, bad decisions, and awkward execution are paths to clarity. So many people get frustrated and stop working when confronted by failed attempts at art. You have to forgive yourself for the mess you made and, like a child, pick up your blocks and stack them up again. If you can ultimately understand why you went wrong, the correct path will reveal itself. Self-criticism in the middle of creating something can be an artistic dead end. You’ve got to stay open to accidents and to your subconscious, ’cause it’ll tell you what you need to know.
And after the agony comes the fun. I had an amazing party for that book in the summer of ’88. It was a humid summer afternoon, and all my windows were open in search of an elusive breeze, as the upstairs and then the backyard filled with friends from many worlds. The late Jack “the Rapper” Gibson, a legendary black radio personality, was profiled in the book, and he flew up from Atlanta. Debra Crable, the doe-eyed, gorgeous host of the syndicated Ebony Jet Showcase, rolled in from Chicago. Model Veronica Webb and a bevy of beauties came through. So did Broadway diva Melba Moore, and my pal Russell Simmons, who complained all day about the cracks in Brooklyn’s sidewalks, and wondered why I still lived in the ghetto.
Those are just the names I remember off the top of my head. My memory was overwhelmed by the variety of folks who ate and drank in my backyard and living room, and on my front steps. At one point I went outside and found Russell and Melba Moore on my stoop talking, a more unlikely duo it’s hard to imagine. When my mother, my sister, and my then eight-year-old niece, Ebony, arrived, the circle was complete. It wasn’t a dance party like Ma’s Saturday night throw-downs, but it was as close as I’ll ever come. It took me weeks to get the toilet working right again after the heavy use. The energy of all those amazing people in my space lingered in 19 Willoughby for months afterward. I’ve always felt that there was something magical about that gathering that propelled The Death of Rhythm and Blues into the world, and has given it a long, successful life.
Fort Greene Park was just down the block from me, so I was still running a bit to stay fit and centered. I’d tackle those steps that you see at the end of She’s Gotta Have It, and then run up and down the hills by the tennis courts. But most of my searches for transcendence during this period of my life were behind my primitive PC and at my stereo. For the first time in my life I had a place all to myself. Aside from listening to music professionally, to write reviews or prepare for interviews, I could play particular songs as often as I wanted, a dream come true for a kid who’d lived with family and roommates my whole life. I’d play certain records seven, eight, or nine times in a row, getting lost in them with no intention of finding my way home. CDs were just coming on the market, so most of the time it was me moving the needle back on a 45 or 12-inch single, or carefully landing on the right groove on an album.
Certain records still send me on a reverie: Aretha Franklin’s “Call Me”; Led Zep’s “Trampled Underfoot”; Womack & Womack’s “Baby, I’m Scared of You”; Miles’s Sketches of Spain; LL Cool J’s “Jack the Ripper.” And, perhaps most of all, anything sung by Anita Baker, starting with her first hit, “Angel.” These days Anita’s no longer in fashion. Two generations of soul sirens have come and gone since she first appeared. Plus, she took a long hiatus in the nineties to raise kids, which has diluted her appeal, but for me she once conjured dreamscapes like no other vocalist.
The first time I heard her voice I was lying on a friend’s sofa bed in Los Angeles. KJLH, a once great hit-making R&B station, played “Angel,” and I was entranced. The tune was laid-back, with jazzy chords and a hook that was more spoken than sung by Ms. Baker. Her voice was throaty and womanly, though Baker could invoke a girlish naïveté when a song required it. Her voice harkened back to the bluesy past of black pop music, yet was also well suited to the cognac aesthetic of the day.
I found out that Baker recorded for an upstart R&B indie label named Beverly Glen. Though short-lived, Beverly Glen released two gems in the middle of the soulfully deprived eighties—Baker’s debut album, The Songstress, and Bobby Womack’s amazing come-back recording, The Poet. While “Angel” put Baker on the map, it wasn’t until her Elektra records debut, Rapture, in 1986 that she exploded, and I was really able to turn my enthusiasm for her into articles. I wrote a lead review about Baker for the Village Voice, and quite a bit about her in the pages of Billboard. I even coined a phrase, “retro nuevo,” to describe the blend of old and new I felt her work represented.
When Baker made her New York concert debut at Avery Fisher Hall on the heels of Rapture, I was in the fourth row. That night she certainly fulfilled my need for the transcendental. Many in the crowd must have shared my eagerness to hear her, because Baker was rewarded with standing ovations after her third song, seventh song, and tenth song. Somewhere buried in my archives are my notes on that show. I don’t remember what songs inspired that response, but I do know I’ve never attended a show for what was, in essence, a debuting singer where the audience was so passionately in love. On that particular night Baker and the audience were in absolute sync. It was on that night two decades ago that I decided that, if I ever got married (something still in doubt all these years later), Baker (or a recording of her) singing “Angel” or “Sweet Love” would be played as my bride and I walked down the aisle.
I remembered thinking as I left Avery Fisher Hall that it was nights like this that made all the bad gigs, the uninspired professionalism, and formulaic performances I endured worth it. It was why I waded through the piles of vinyl that surrounded my desk at Billboard. I was always looking for that music and performer who, however briefly, touched the divine and shared that feeling with me. During my prime years as a music critic there were others who did it for me (Tracy Chapman, Babyface, Bruce Springsteen, Luther Vandross, Fela, Aretha, Paul Simon, John Coltrane, and Miles), but something about Anita Baker made me feel it so profoundly.
Looking back to my late twenties, I think now that I was seeking something in art that was lacking in my life. While I gloried in these transporting musical moments, I couldn’t connect emotionally with people in an equally satisfying way. I was in love at least twice during these years, and had strong romantic connections to a series of amazing girlfriends. But I never married, and rarely totally committed. I can chalk some of that up to just being a horny young man. I think that’s understandable.
However, I know there was more to it. This feeling I’d had when I was a teenager, of being outside of my own emotions, and of being dispassionate about my life, affected my love affairs. I could feel a cold, distant part of myself take over. That part of me could find fault with my love for any woman. It wasn’t that I attacked them, but I criticized myself out of the relationship. I wasn’t listening enough. I wasn’t sympathetic enough. I was too busy. I was married to my writing.
Whatever I said to them (and told myself), it was just a justification for not truly committing. It felt like something inside was blocking me, and I cried about this inability quite a bit during this period. I’d play Otis Redding and John Coltrane alone in my high-ceilinged living room, drowning in my melancholy for several spins of the record, and then I’d vow to do better and be more open the next time. It was sad and funny that I could be so damn emotional about a record, but not about the women who loved me.
EAST NEW YORK
While my life in Fort Greene (and beyond) was filled with the upwardly mobile ambience of art, romance, and parties, I was still deeply connected to the tougher Brooklyn of my youth, a world just a subway ride away. Mideighties New York was suffering through the height of crackmania, and all the family I cared about lived in the urban war zone known as East New York.
Back when I was in college my mother had put together enough money to buy a house, which was actually on the same street as our Fairfield Towers apartment. She’d bought a two-story home at 812 New
Jersey Avenue, about four blocks from 1081 New Jersey, and just below Linden Boulevard, one of Brooklyn’s main thoroughfares, the one that ran through the heart of East New York.
At some point during my college years the Fairfield Towers housing complex had reached its tipping point, and all my white friends, and quite a few of my middle-class black ones, had already split or were in the process of fleeing. Ma’s decision to buy a house had many ramifications, none bigger than its effect on her love affair with Stan. She had invested herself in the relationship, half joking to me that she’d “made him a man” by pushing him to pursue an assistant principal’s job. For his part, Stan had stayed in a monogamous relationship with a woman with two kids, not something every single guy would do. Over time it became clear that Stan’s relatives, particularly his mother, were strongly against him inheriting a ready-made family.
Ma’s desire to own a home made Stan face a tough decision: Would he buy a house with her, or not? Would he be with Arizona George for the long run? Together their teachers’ salaries would have gotten them a bigger house in a better neighborhood. Stan procrastinated. Ma waited. He couldn’t make up his mind. Ma viewed his hesitation as a negative comment on his commitment to her. So, being a stubborn little woman, she just went on and bought her own damn house. That bold move effectively ended their relationship. They saw each other for a while after we moved into 812, but the bond that had sustained them for years had been irreparably broken.
Over the years I’d spot Stan at sporting events—once he even called out to me—but the man had broken my mother’s heart, so there was no place for him in mine. However, he did leave a small mark on our future. As a housewarming present, Stan gave Ma a black calico cat that Andrea named Baby. To this day either my mother or sister has always kept a cat as a pet, a lingering bit of Stan in their lives. Ma tried to hide her disappointment from Andrea and me, but I knew it hurt her deeply. I don’t think she’s ever loved another man since.
As a result of all this, 812 New Jersey was always a melancholy residence. We had a basement with a washer/dryer, a concrete backyard, two bathrooms, and an upstairs storage room, the kind of space we’d never had before. Maybe because my room was smaller than at 1081, maybe because of how and why Ma purchased it, that house never seemed that happy to me.
Not helping my feelings about 812 was that there was no escaping the fact that by moving below Linden, we were now officially back in a ghetto. Unlike Brownsville, which was dominated by acres of public housing, East New York had block upon block of attached two-story homes. Not row houses, since they didn’t share the same architectural style, but all the ones around us had little ledges that could allow the adventurous to walk from one end of the block to the other. Our integrated life in Fairfield had already disappeared, so moving back into a 100 percent black environment was no big deal. Plus, we were on a block of homeowners, so it wasn’t like we’d moved back into the projects.
But, like most of New York’s working-class ’hoods in the late seventies, the quality of life in East New York was declining rapidly. While owning a home was an economic step up for Ma and us, everything else around us went to hell. The night of the infamous 1977 blackout the last shopping strips in the area were robbed clean of appliances and furniture. Our neighbors hauled them home on their backs or tag-teamed carrying them. The stores that were ravaged then didn’t come back. Whatever short-term gains people made the night of the blackout were fleeting. When the morning came, and order was restored, we saw that the economic backbone of East New York was broken and, all these years later, it is yet to be fully repaired.
Our new neighbors were an eclectic group of working-class people. There was a pious family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. There was a tough family of Caribbean immigrants. There were our next-door neighbors, the Griffiths, a family of rowdy boys, most of whom would join the Five Percent nation and be renamed True God and Powerful. Across the street from our house was an elementary school where, in the summer, mobile DJs would blast Kraftwerk’s “Trans-Europe Express” and MFSB’s “Love Is the Message” for hours on end, giving me inklings of the transition in New York street music from disco to hip-hop.
After I moved out, first to Queens and then to Fort Greene, the area became drenched in drugs and its attendant violence. I got into the habit of listening to CBS News Radio 88 before I went to sleep. Late at night I’d go into my bedroom after writing and listen to the overnight news. So many times there were stories of drug-related drive-bys or suspicious fires that had happened in East New York. I’d listen tensely, always worried that an incident at 812 New Jersey Avenue would end up on the police blotter.
This wasn’t idle anxiety. My sister had made several bad choices that made my fear well founded. Starting in high school, and then through a sad short-lived college career, Andrea had grown more rebellious. Whereas once she had been a straight A student, school fell by the wayside for her as she concentrated her energies in the street. Soon it became clear that drugs were becoming increasingly central to her life. Andrea, always an aggressive soul, became even more short-tempered and volatile. My mother and sister became engaged in a hot war, not just over Andrea’s state of mind, but over the future of Ebony, my sister’s first child. While Ebony was being raised by Andrea, she was still living under her grandmother’s roof. So the arguments in 812 weren’t just over my sister’s behavior, but over how to raise a little girl.
I always sided with my mother in these battles, but Andrea didn’t really care what I thought about her. She was going to do what she wanted how she wanted. During my years at 19 Willoughby our communications became brief and, at best, cordial. Sometimes she’d try to get me to see her side of things. “Ma is getting in my business,” she’d argue, as though her mother was suppose to ignore her daughter’s decay. These arguments made me incredibly angry at her, forcing us even further apart. I felt like she was trying to manipulate me, that every conversation had a purpose and that she was never being honest with me.
Things would get worse. As East New York was ravaged by crack, any family that could escape did. A home on New Jersey Avenue on the end of the block nearest Linden Boulevard became abandoned. About a month or so later some people removed the “For Sale” sign and moved in. They weren’t a family, though. They were squatters. Even worse, they were drug dealers. These were lean and hungry young men who ran wires into neighboring backyards to steal electricity, and they began having noisy visitors day and night. Most folks on the block were rightfully freaked out by their appearance.
Not Andrea. My sister befriended this posse and began spending increasing amounts of time at their squat. Her relationship with one posse member escalated into a brief marriage and the birth of her second daughter, Leigh. Saddled with two young daughters and complicated relationships with both fathers, Andrea became increasingly angry. I felt very distant from my sister, viewing her now as the destructive force in our family, and I was constantly having to choose between my mother and my sister, which is a terrible position to be put in. Visiting 812 New Jersey became a chore, since I was confident I’d always end up in the middle of a nasty argument between the two women I loved most in the world. Whenever I spent time with my nieces I found myself in an untenable place—being very affectionate and loving with them while withholding any emotion I felt for Andrea except frustration.
I urged Ma to toss Andrea out or move herself. Even if it meant pushing Ebony out with her, I worried that my mother was being put in grave danger by Andrea’s presence in the house. I could argue until I was blue in the face, but Ma felt she could not abandon Ebony. And even though she wouldn’t admit it, she couldn’t let Andrea go. As long as Andrea was nearby, she could, perhaps, save her from the streets.
By supporting my mother, I became my sister’s de facto enemy. It was such a weird journey my family had taken. We’d gone from being a tight team working to escape the projects to a dysfunctional family in a two-story home. The chaos of Brooklyn’s streets, which we’d
barely avoided for years, now controlled our lives.
Few people in Fort Greene, or any of my other worlds, knew how complicated my family situation had become. All they knew was that I was writing books, yapping on the tube, and involved with high-profile types. Despite all that activity, I was scared for those I loved, yet determined not to let the druggy undertow pull me under. My mother urged me to keep on pushing with my work, to achieve, and to make her proud. I guess I felt like my life was a validation of her life, quelling any doubts that she might have had about how she had raised Andrea and me. And so I did that. I pushed and pushed, and I still do.
SPIKE
I first became aware of Spike Lee via public television. Sometime around 1983 I saw a broadcast of Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop on New York’s channel 13, and I was electrified by the shock of recognition. This depiction of a barbershop owner deep in debt to a suave philosophy-spouting loan shark was the first film I’d ever seen that resembled the Brooklyn I knew—not simply the gorgeously photographed streets and buildings, but the bits of slang, body language, and relaxed black flavor that oozed out of every frame. Even if I hadn’t been aware that this student Academy Award-winning film had been directed by a homeboy, I would have known this film had to have been molded by black hands.
Turned out that Spike and I had a mutual friend, an aspiring filmmaker, who arranged for us to meet at a Chinese restaurant on Seventh Avenue in Midtown. Spike had on a boxy red tam, gold wire-framed glasses, a small, bemused face. Don’t remember much about the conversation other than that Spike really wanted to do music videos. I hooked him up with some executives, though no gigs came from these biz introductions (a quite embarrassing fact for these same executives, who’d later try to win rights to Spike’s soundtracks).
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