Imani J. : February 2016

Music Monday: Abra

By Imani Johnson - February 04, 2016

Since it is Black History month this whole entire month I'm going to post things relating to the black community.

Monday's are going to be Music Monday's where I showcase some lesser known black music artists. I figured I would do music as apart of the black history month on the blog since music is a big part of our community. Music was and is our way of expressing our struggles but it is also apart of our creative expression as a people, deepening the black culture that is still evolving.

Today's music Monday artist is Abra.

Abra is a female singer with the label Awful Records based in Atlanta, Georgia currently consisting of 17 members.

Her sound is more of an old school R&B vibe influenced by songs such as "Bills, Bills, Bills" by Destiny's Child and " Shawty Swing My Way" by K.P. and Envy. She mixes this throwback vibe with modern House music and cool techno type beats.

I discovered Abra less than a month ago while in class supposed to be doing a Spanish assignment, instead I was on Youtube watching music videos. Soon after watching one of her videos, I ended up watching all of her extremely artistic and visually appealing music videos, and listening to all of her songs on Soundcloud. Her different sound, her voice and her lyrics made me an instant fan.

(I posted this on Feb 1st on Monday but for some reason the date on the post keeps on coming up as Thursday)

Listen to her two EP's Rose and BLQ VELVET below and my favorite song by her BFF.
You can check out her Soundcloud here and follow her on Twitter here.

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Black History Month

Throwback Thursdays

By Imani Johnson - February 04, 2016

On Wednesdays and Sundays I won't be making a black history month post but, any other day check back on my blog and see what the day's topic is!

Thursdays are going to be "Throwback Thursdays" and this is where I will actually put the black history in black history month.

I plan on doing a short biography on a person of history on Thursdays but, since it is the first week of black history month I'm going to give a brief history on how important slaves are.

America would not be where it is today without the help of black slaves. Our black ancestors developed this land. They were the ones who labored, they raised their kids, they were the ones who knew how to grow the crops. Without the slaves, America would have probably still been the Native Americans land since slaves were the backbone of the economy and without the economy America wouldn't have been making any money. Black slaves built America. And to not discredit the Native Americans, without their help the European settlers would have been dead in the first place.

No slaves = No work being done

No work being done = No trade

No trade = No revenue

No revenue = ??

The reason why I am mentioning this is because the slaves are kind of put on the back burner.

Of course, we all know how they were treated badly and how they labored but never in history books do they mention the fact that everything relied on the slaves. Without slaves where would America be? The southerners knew how important the slaves were which is why they seceded from the union. They founding fathers knew how important slaves were which is why when they wrote the constitution, they decided to focus mainly on the rights of the white males and deal with the slave thing another time.

It may be time for us to stop pitying the slaves and to start thanking them.

If they had known how much power they possess can you imagine how different America would be?

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Black History Month

Light vs Dark

By Imani Johnson - February 02, 2016

For Tuesdays Black History month on Tales of A Lame I'm going to be focusing on things I think should change in the black community. These are just going to be based on my opinion of things I have experienced and observed.

Today the topic is light skin vs dark skin.

This has been something that the black community has struggled with since the slave days where the lighter skinned workers got to work in the house and the darker skinned workers had to do the labor. This issue has been talked about many times, in Spike Lee's School Daze, and a couple of years ago when everybody did #lightskinswinning or #darkskinswinning, and now where people on social media are fetishizing mixed babies.

If we were to really go in to this issue it is not even just a problem in the black community parts of the world like South America, Asia, and Africa believe that lighter skinned people are more beautiful.

But the thing is we need to be content in our melanin.

We have internally accepted this damaged way of thinking that whiter is better. We must focus on ourselves and believe that we do not have to lighten our skintone in order to be beautiful, we do not have to lighten our skintone in order to be accepted. And just because someone is lighter doesn't mean that they are automatically better and think that they are better than darker toned people.

Dark and light skinned black people are all equally fighting for justice and struggling against discrimination.

In the end we are black.

And I can't wait for the day where race isn't even an issue and people can just be human.