WBEZ Music

On Wednesday, former Destiny’s Child member and solo artist Kelly Rowland released “Dirty Laundry,” a highly emotional, personal, and startlingly blunt song about her career and personal life. Production-wise, “Dirty Laundry” is as clear and straightforward as the lyrics. Structured with steady, yet ominous piano chords and a static drumbeat, “Dirty Laundry” plays like some of the best confessional r&b songs. Rowland sings:

Started to call them people on him/I was battered/He hit the window like it was me/Until it shattered/He pulled me out and said ‘Don’t nobody love you but me/Not your mama not your daddy and especially not B’

In the song, Rowland talks about her feelings in the industry and a violent relationship with an ex, but her situation is applicable and relevant to the circumstances of her listeners. According to a study from the U.S. Department of Justice in a compilation of statistics from the American Bar Association’s Commission of Domestic Violence, “Black females experienced intimate partner violence at a rate 35% higher than that of white females, and about 22 times the rate of women of other races.” As a singer in the r&b genre with audiences largely both black and female, Rowland’s release can act as a call for action and a means of shedding light on an issue that still receives little attention.

For his talent, for his courage, for the breadth of his vision, and for a worldview that refuses to be bludgeoned into nihilism, Chance is a thousand times the artist Keef is… though venturing to say so will no doubt stir up this critic’s critics, the wisenheimers who maintain that I don’t know sh*t about hip-hop because I prefer mine free of hate and clichéd posing. Witness this recent Tweet:

“Everyone, enjoy listening to this Chance the Rapper tape, now, while you can, before @JimDeRogatis’s cosign makes liking it impossible”

Gee, it sure would have been nice to pan this disc, if only to prove my friend above wrong. But I can’t do it. Acid Rap is a masterpiece, and it’s your loss if you let me keep you from allowing it to enrich your life.

What I hear is anger, disgust, and contempt for much of the modern condition, and here, I have my specific gripes, you have yours, and Savages have theirs (including that stuff about cell phones). But I also hear optimism—in the form of the power of uncompromising sounds to make a world of crap more bearable, and via the belief that refusing to treat people as idiots will be rewarded, at least via a connection with those people who are not idiots.

Which is to say, if you listen to this music and don’t feel something, I doubt that you’re really alive. And I don’t think I care to know you.