Intertext
Volume 17 Article 13
1-1-2009
I’m Gonna Find You and Make You Want Me
Joanna Meyers
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Recommended Citation Meyers, Joanna (2009) "I’m Gonna Find You and Make You Want Me," Intertext: Vol. 17 , Article 13. Available at: https://surface.syr.edu/intertext/vol17/iss1/13
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Intertext by an authorized editor of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. e m h en do t c is n o W o nn d lk i ol ta y Meyers: I’m Gonna Find You and Make You Want Me eh k la b lic p to s to t an’t t igh nt C an s pe w a re ys t lwa a nd a h a es it w r s c , e o s e p n y s k
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e w s m ’ o I c t n w ld ho o e No ow g w, n m nd e be r a v tter th an silve o d m ay r of ou judge ment Y
“I’m Gonna Find You and Make You Want Me”
Joanna Myers Course: WRT 303, Research & Writing
Instructor: Henry Jankiewicz
Author’s Note: The assignment was to describe your relationship with one of your favorite CDs in a literary jour- nalistic style, using a collage of time periods and voices.
Editors’ Note: The lyrics intertwined with the body of this essay are well- situated and thought-provoking. You might enjoy listening to the songs after reading. Published by SURFACE, 2009 1 32 photo by Maggie Swift Intertext, Vol. 17 [2009], Art. 13 orgive them father for they know not what they do/ is almost violated by the proclamation that violence and It took me a little while to discover/Wolves in sheep death have similarly come to defi ne the black community. “Fcoats who pretend to be lovers/Men who lack con- The Fugees performed in a time when artists like Tupac science will even lie to themselves, to themselves/A friend Shakur and Notorious BIG were being shot, their fame once said, and I found to be true/That everyday people, and celebrity not exempting them from the violence of they lie to God too/So what makes you think, that they East and West Coast gang rivalries. Rap and hip-hop won’t lie to you….”1 were being dismissed as an overtly violent-shock-value means of entertainment. I sat in my living room one hot night last August. Lauryn Hill’s comeback concert. No one had seen or heard any- It was in this age that American popular culture began its thing of Hill for eight years. But now, two children and a journey to categorize the Fugees and, later, Lauryn Hill broken marriage to Ziggy Marley later—she was back. herself. Just as music media would create a definition After watching stage crews set up and mics tested, it and place for them, they tore it apart. Rolling Stone, on was two hours after the concert was supposed to start. their September 1996 cover, claimed that the Fugees A shoe commercial cuts out and the face of the president could be the future of rock and roll.4 With the onset of of the Brooklyn Borough, Marty Markowitz, appears on white rap groups like the Beastie Boys, white culture was screen, announcing to thousands of raucous fans crowd- beginning to adopt the raucous beats and in your face ed in New York’s Wingate fi eld “Lauryn Hill is here. That’s lyrics of this new hip hop for its own. the important thing. Lauryn Hill is here.”2 All members of the Fugees are second generation Haitian Almost ten years ago, Hill’s raucous concerts were all Americans. Their name, Fugees, is short for “refugees,” over MTV, VH1, and even news media stations. Clips of which speaks to the idea of identity and place in Ameri- her strutting across the stage in crazy dresses and bright can society. They sing about black Americans feeling like makeup showed how she dominated refugees in their own country, and how the stage with a wild animosity—the one characteristic, such as guns, vio- cockiness of a seven foot black man, in Many of life’s situations had lence, and/or drugs, defi nes their life- six-inch heels. All that had been pres- style and the way they are perceived ent of her in recent years were ques- no clearly-defined borders be- by others. tions: Would she be reuniting with the tween good and evil, truth and Fugees—when two of their members This is Lauryn Hill’s departure point. were claiming that she was the reason deception, black and white. The perspective from which she forms a reunion hadn’t happened yet? Was poetic realizations about life and love she still performing after having chil- is always linked back to the disillusion- dren? Was she still speaking to ex-husband, son of the ment and frustration of inequality and racial disparities. legendary Bob Marley?2 This is the point from which I began to know her, hav- Ripping through the restless noise of the crowd like the ing felt alienated by the Fugees’ strong racial beliefs that crack of thunder, Hill answered our questions: had no place for me as a young, middle-class, white girl. As Hill was laying out the framework for her identity in “READY OR NOT HERE I COME…I’M GONNA FIIIIIND a white-dominated society and singing and rapping it to YOU AND MAKE YOU WANT ME,” the a cappella echo of the world, I realized that the modern tensions between Lauryn’s voice cried out. The crowd paralyzed in its own black and white that I saw everyday were a viewpoint amazement and then…uproar fi lled the air.2 from which to understand complex and frustrating situa- tions and relationships. I was coming to realize that many Former songstress/rapper of the group Fugees, Lauryn of life’s situations had no clearly defi ned borders between Hill started performing with rappers Wyclef Jean and Pras good and evil, truth and deception, black and white. Michel in the mid 1990s. Combining hard hip-hop beats with Caribbean reggae sounds and classic R&B music, In her album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” Hill com- such as Roberta Fleck’s “Killing Me Softly,” the group bines the in-your-face style of the Fugees with her own topped the Billboard charts.3 poetry and sincerity. She says what she means and she says it with unapologetic devotion. She gives in to it, Identity became a big issue for the group, in terms of doesn’t step back when the answer is too harsh. race, gender, and sexuality. For instance, one of their songs from the album “The Score,” entitled “Zealots,” When I was in junior high, “The Miseducation of Lauryn starts with a Doo-Wop melody circa 1950. After five Hill” was the CD to get. I grew up in an urban community rounds of barbershop doo-wops, Pras Michel comes on with a large immigrant and black population. Girls my with the eerie proclamation “Another MC loses life to- age were collecting Lauryn Hill, Monica, Brandy, Tatiana night…” (MC being a name for a rapper or hip-hop per- Ali CDs as badges of honor—the more lyrics you knew, former).1 The uncomfortable tension between the pristine the cooler you were. But Lauryn Hill stood out amongst a music that has come to defi ne white culture of the 1950s bland crowd of lyrics like Brandy and Monica’s, “The Boy https://surface.syr.edu/intertext/vol17/iss1/13 2 33 Meyers: I’m Gonna Find You and Make You Want Me Is Mine” and “Have you ever loved somebody so much Hill relays in an interview with BET after her free concert in it makes you cry?” Hill’s “The Final Hour” and “To Zion” Brooklyn, her search for this identity is inextricably linked are songs that combined her deep spiritual connection to the color of her skin. to God and her musings on her complex relationships with people that have constructed the life views that she “I think a lot of black men and women struggle with the professes in her songs. While Ice Cube rapped, “You identity crisis that takes place with black people in Amer- can do it put your a#@ into it,” Hill spoke of her trials with ica, black people in the Western world. Not just who am deciding to have a baby at a young age in “To Zion” and I, but how to be who I am in that particular western para- the prevalence of sex and gender roles in what she calls digm and still remain true to myself. I think that they need “the ghetto community” in “Doo Wop (That Thing).” courage and protection to do what I think they would in- stinctively do if they felt safe enough.”5 But who is Lauryn Hill—to me? Do I, as a middle class white girl have any right to even listen to the lyrics of an Her CD, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” is collaged artist who openly believes that my family’s fi nancial and with audio scenes of a teacher talking with his class. A social status are directly linked to the fact that we are school bell rings. Talking…footsteps. A man’s deep white? She is not talking to me…right? voice comes on, presumably a teacher taking roll call… “Please respond when I call your name. Kevin Charles, I asked myself these questions growing up in a world Jarris Wigmans, Alicia Simmons, Phillip Valdez, Gabrielle where we were told that black and white made no dif- Salado, Latoya Bradbury, Antoin Mitchell, Shaquon Sut- ference, and yet, we knew they were wrong. Ever since ton, Corey Thomas, Taran Lucas, Tamia Caldwell, Tamika kindergarten, me and my friends all knew that more black Marshall, Lauryn Hill…Lauryn Hill…Lauryn Hill…?” kids than white kids lived in Southfi eld Gardens, the pub- lic housing project down the street from where I went to The male teacher leads discussions about love and sex school. We knew that more white people lived on the with the students, and they offer refreshing opinions West side, where the houses are bigger and nicer than whole-heartedly. I can, with almost certainty, say that the the other parts of town. At school, they told us that black students are black and the teacher is black and that they and white were equal, that it did not matter…but how go to an urban school, maybe in the Bronx, Brooklyn, could they say that when it had a direct effect on so many somewhere in Hill’s native New Jersey perhaps. Now I aspects of our daily lives? ask myself… how do I know this? The way they talk, their names, the words they use…I know without a doubt that “Produce words so profuse /It’s abuse how I juice up this they are black and it is frightening to think of all the as- beat /Like I’m deuce /Two people both visible relation- sumptions that the audience has about this group of kids ship with where one came from and how one lived.” and that I have about this group of kids. Their financial status, their home lives, the state of the school they are I attach to Lauryn Hill because she knows this too. She in—I know none of this, but I know all of it—too well, too speaks of God, honesty, and being a good person in a easily. way that is “un-Oprah-esque”. She is not a preacher, but rather she is humanly part of the problems she speaks of. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a story of a girl, a mes- She sinned with Jezebel, in “Doo Wop (That Thing),” and siah, from Brooklyn, who is in constant search for truth, she looks to find fulfillment in her wealth and success with awareness, and consistency. She is consistently at other performers in “Superstar.” odds, and puts her audience at odds, with knowing and not knowing. In a search for truth beyond stereotypes, I think that a lot of the speculation surrounding Hill is a beyond what is expected, Hill sets you up and lets you result of the inability of society to defi ne her. Mother, rap- down. I will let her fi nish this: per, black woman, racial radical, poet…She speaks about God, truth, and justice, yet she uses the word “Nigger” “I treat this like my thesis /Well written topic /Broken down in many of her lyrics. She warns girls not to use sex as a into pieces/ I introduce then equal /Like I’m Gemini/ Rath- way to feel accepted, and yet she has a baby as a young, er simeon/ If I Jimmy on this lock I could pop it /You can’t single woman. stop it /Drop it/ Your whole crew’s microscopic/ Like particles while I make international articles/ And on the “I begat this Flippin’ in the ghetto on a dirty mattress/You cover /Don’t discuss the baby mother business /I been in can’t match this rapper /actress/More powerful than two this third LP you can’t tell me, I witness/ First handed I’m Cleopatras/Bomb graffi ti on the tomb of Nefertiti/MCs candid /You can’t stand it /Respect demanded /And get ain’t ready to take it to the Serengeti/My rhymes is heavy fl own around the planet/ Rock Hard like granite or steel / like the mind of Sister Betty/…Adjacent to the king, fear People feel/ Lauryn Hill from New-Ark to Israel/ And this no human being/Roll with cherubims to Nassau Colise- is real /So I keep makin’ the street’s ballads/ While you um/Now hear this mixture/Where hip hop meets scrip- lookin’ for dressin’ to go with your tossed salad/ You ture/Develop a negative into a positive picture”1 could get the money/ You could get the power /But keep your eyes on the fi nal hour…” Hill’s career can be seen as an attempt to fi nd identity. As Published by SURFACE, 2009 3 34
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Rolling Stone (2007). 28 Sept. 2007 e s s e e k ’ stone.com/rockdaily/index.php>. i k t l a i t d n n n e u e 3.”The Fugees.” Fugees Offi cial Website; Sony Music. h o h w t s 27 Sept. 2007 i s w e gees/>. o e m n c y a f h u r o 4.”Lauryn Hill.” 28 Sept. 2007 o , t t r s a t t u n s a m r e w p u u o s y s y a a d d n w l a s a A s w t h n t t e a s i c p r o y h n n n C i a s m y a a l e t p m s o o u t c J t e s n r t a e o i h w r t a s t t h y u a c B w 0 l n n a 0 o i 0 s , n e i 0 1 t p i r o y c y m o m p h y t r i H a e w e h s c t n a n h e g n i d l i a c w d n i e t r o ’ n g c n o i d n o n n u u o is y R e t s c a iu n h r e t a https://surface.syr.edu/intertext/vol17/iss1/13u u 4 q w q e o A 35 s n n n k i o I s C ea