Euke' Joint Season 2

I know that I've been falling behind on my blog posts, but just want to let you guys know that I have randomly entered radio journalism. I was pulled in as a special guest, but me and my friends had so much fun that I'm a regular [:0)]. Long story short, check out the show and try to find me.

http://geocities.com/euclynthajunior/

New posts coming soon.

My Interview with Demarco Majors (Bleu Magazine)

Bright Nights, Basketball and the Bible: Two Days with MTV/LOGOs breakout star Demarco Majors
Over the course of two nights, Bleu Magazine picks the brain of an all-star basketball player and gets the scoop on his life before the fame, his faith, his love life and how he ever had the strength to live with a bunch of jocks for a month and a half.
Words by Marcus Scott

For some, the game of basketball is merely a pastime, but for Bay Area marvel Demarco Majors, it’s a way of life. While most men walk to work in a suit and tie, Majors, 31, is captain of San Francisco’s Castro Rockdogs, winners of the 2006 Chicago Gay Games championship. He is also a bonafide “overnight celebrity,” reprising his role with the team as point guard on MTV Logo’s critically-acclaimed “Shirts & Skins.”
The show, documenting a grueling month and a half in the lives of some of San Francisco’s most athletically-inclined as they march to victory, became a sensation for the network. And why not? A team of striking and strapping masculine men working up a sweat sounds like a cloud nine get-away. Plus, with tensions between teammates and coaches, the moxie to overcome adversity as a team of openly out gay men, not to mention the teams’ quest for victory at thus year’s Gay Games, offered enough drama and tension to a make a successful season.
But there’s more than meets the eye about Demarco Majors, who would later become the first pro-mens basketball player to come out, playing with the American Basketball Association. He’s sharp, eloquent, carries himself like a soldier on a battlefield, and has a passion in his voice that speaks volumes even in his silences. As the preacher-turned-basketball captain speaks from a cellular phone, in various locations, Majors opens up and gets personal, as if sharing a testimony to the masses.
Day 1
Talking to Demarco Majors at nightfall via phone, as he sits, sipping a cup of Joe in a vociferous Manhattan Starbucks, the strident acoustics braying through the airwaves was at first disorienting. The earsplitting roar of the room cutting up dialogue could be disheartening to someone merely trying to pick the brain of a young scholar like Majors. But, he’s a man who makes himself heard: His smooth vocals just as easily rap softly at the eardrum and all that background noise fades out.
He must be used to all the racket by now, playing a sport that’s allowed him a chance to travel all over the world to hundreds of thousands of people. Known now internationally as an “out” basketball player, Majors made the Out 100 among other accolades, however it’s not to say he hasn’t been affected by bad press. In 2002, being apart of the San Francisco Rock Dogs, Majors became the subject of a story by a reporter for the Gay News hurting his chances of playing pro-ball on more “mainstream” teams.
“Thank God, I only lost a handful of contacts of people who wouldn’t answer my calls or talk to me anymore. But once the ABA came around, I was able to throw that to the side and instead of telling people who I am, I just went to the try-outs and worked hard and made the team.”
As being an athlete with the San Francisco Rock Dogs, Majors was never hindered from playing professional basketball, playing in various countries in several continents. Playing in Australia, Argentina, New Zealand, and Fuji, amongst other platforms, Majors thrived in the sport. The hard work paid off very well, as he celebrates victories closer to home, for example, with his teammates in Chicago after winning the 2006 Gay Games. “When you’re an import player and you’re American, especially African-American, you have to come out and perform or they show your visa, or [trade] you to another team, or you’re off the team. So, playing in the Gay Games with all my friends and my cousin, close to my hometown in Evansville, Indiana, was extremely, extremely special for me,” Majors clarified.
He’s talented and experienced ballplayer, with the potential of selling sports drinks, has the sex appeal to market high fashion clothing and a face made for a spot on a Wheaties cereal box. Nonetheless, it can be argued that playing in the Gay Games affected some of his platforms in sports entertainment, like his chances working with the National Basketball Association, for example. Being an athlete and gay, aren’t exactly classified as common in sports.
“However when it comes to playing on a level of the NBA, there were things I couldn’t play if I truly knew I could play because of that fear. I’ve gone to try-outs before and I have made it so close and then when people start to hear about your story, and where you’re from and people start to talk to you, you start to pull yourself away from the crowd because of that fear because of what people knew. Growing up, there was no one I could look up to. As an openly professional gay athlete, there’s never been anyone I could go and ask any questions to or to just get that information for myself. The only thing I’ve ever had was some of my friends, but it would be me there, doing what I thought I needed to do. So, it’s that fear that’s what hindered me,” Majors explained.
Born September 6, 1977, to a disadvantaged family in Evansville, IN, Majors began in the parks dribbling a ball, and not the tangerine and black orb he’d learn to master in his later life, but a soccer ball. “People might say we were lower class, but we were poor! Sometimes, my mom would come home and we’d eat bread or go to sleep hungry because mom [couldn’t] effort to put food on the table.”
In his youth, Majors endured physical, emotional and sexual abuse—which he says, allowed his talk to people about his experiences—allowed him to push on. Basketball was his getaway. While Majors would strap his cleats in school and kick a ball, after school, he’d play b-ball with the neighborhood boys. Through stories, he was well-informed of his father, a great ballplayer, who later became a paraplegic by the time Majors turned four, passing away twenty years later when Majors was twenty-four. However, he learned to cope later in life with the abuse, as weel as the absence of his father, and talks openly about it.
“You always go to your source of power when you’re feeling down. Some people pray, some people mediate, some people write in their journals, some of us pick up a basketball and go to the basketball court because there’s a family, there’s a kinship, there’s camaraderie. Your family may not be great at home but you can always take up four [or five] other guys, get on the other basketball court together, cheer, slap hands, hug, encourage, lose together, win together and form a bonding friendship. That was always my sanctuary. It’s my place of mediation, where I can be myself or be out of myself. It’s my home,” Majors mediated.
This also allowed Majors to view men in a different light, allowing him to become the representation of what people see today. With no other men in his household, living with his mother and two sisters, Majors didn’t know who to look to for his positive example of a man.
“I didn’t know how to be any of these things because my mother could only raise me the best she could. She couldn’t raise me to be a man. So, when I went to the basketball court, those were the images I would look at. The only people that really take you in where older street kids that already knew how it felt or are seeing you go through these things. All the people I looked up were selling drugs because we were poor, we were living in the projects and the only way to take care of the small things they had, be it kids or helping their other or father out was to sell drugs,” Majors said.
Growing up, Majors had other intentions of becoming the man the public views today. A self-described ugly duckling, when he turned 18 years of age, Majors moved to California where he attended school, and met a church group. “The moment I was baptized, I was already out meeting people on the street talking to them, studying the bible. From there, I started leading campus ministries. Leading up until I was 23; that was all I ever wanted. I knew the bible pretty dog-on well. It was the best gift I could ever get besides basketball,” Majors reminiscences.
As fate would allow, he constantly prayed and talked with people about impure thoughts. Never preaching against homosexuality, or about same sex couples, but it all changed when he turned 23. Speaking to people in the church, it slowly became evident that the church did not support some of his beliefs, “I would see things people wouldn’t normally see and sometimes I’d say things I didn’t normally agree with because I was getting higher and higher in the church and surely, I found myself pushed myself away from the church,” Majors said.
In 2001, looking to make a closer connection with gay men who enjoyed basketball, Majors went to the Internet and searched gay basketball, and making the discovery that there had been gay gyms with basketball courts in San Francisco. Accompanying Majors to these gyms were his cousin, fellow Rockdogs player Jay White, whom he had tricked into coming to play.
“He would come to open gyms with me, and when we started playing, he started to realize that, “wait a minute… these people aren’t that straight.” So when you walk into the gym and your shorts are a little shorter and your tone of voice is not that deep, and it has a lisp here in there…,” Majors chuckled. “But those boys play hard ball. They maybe a queen off the court, but on the quarter they are all butch, all man.”
Getting the scoop from fellow players that local gyms held tournaments, Majors and White played future teammate Rory Ray, before meeting other players Francis Broome and Alex Herrera. “Once I [came to] California and got through college and the whole process, me and my cousin went to The Castro to just to play at an open gym and Tony Jasinski came out to talk to us after we’ve been around for about 4 or 5 months and talked to me about going and being on a traveling team. He said, “You know there used to be a team here called the Rockdogs and you guys should really think about creating a traveling team, and you know there’s another guy who can play very well, his name is Alex Herrera, he’s a really good player and really good coach and I think this will be very good for each of your lives,” Majors said.
Fresh out of college, Majors and White, who both had a desire to play in tournaments such as gay basketball, wanted something like this opportunity ever since they came out to one another. “Alex invited to his house, and this happened after my dad passed away. My mom told me not to stay in my hometown and that’s really how it happened,” Majors informed.
Often spending time with White, eventually there became an unsaid rift between Majors and his cousin. “Me and my cousin had been around each other for so long and seen had each other under so many different lights, and we had been around each other so much that our identities had become a lot of each other. In order to do some of the things we had to do in life and in order for him to do some of things he wanted to do in life—we both at the same time, even without talking—made the decision,” Majors said. “It’s been a little over the year, even though, in the show, we hung out quite a bit. There would be time where we’d sneak off with each other and just go have a drink like we used to—though it’s kind of different now.”
“So, when they found out that a certain part of me wasn’t as masculine in their vision as they are, the first thing it was, “You mean this faggot whooped my ass?” or “I just got dunked on by a gay dude?” Majors laughed. Then he paused, and as if his voice has be been fossilized in a gelled ice, he reflected: “But one of my friends, who was okay with it for a while, started having visions from God and he started going to church and said that it was just wrong. I lost one of my best friends, and for me it wasn’t really a lost because if you’re one my best friends, then you love me for who I am and for all that I am. That was at a time that I lost thirteen members in my family, I was in a relationship that was failing, I couldn’t go back and try-out for a professional basketball team, and just letting the smoke clear from getting some of these stories from the Internet erased so that I can focus and stay sane a work a job (many jobs), so I can compete and make end’s meet. It was like a hurricane, the wind kept blowing.”
Day 2
A hoarse and raspy vocal rings out through Major’s silken and glossy baritone over the phone. There is no howl from the city streets, no blaring car horns, and the reverberation of steam and blazing foamed milk doesn’t clutter the conversation. There are no cameras in his face and Shirts & Skins has rapped its last episode for the first season. A relaxed and rejuvenated Majors sits back, unfiltered and unplugged, with an unfastened poetry in his vocabulary. Now fresh from his victory with the Rockdogs in Washington, D.C., a more serene and uninhibited Majors took the gloves off and talked man to man.
“Living with guys was so much fun because I hadn’t been around them in a long time, but on the flipside now that I’m older, I’m used to being on my own, so it can be boring because it’s self-serving. I mean, I’m passing the torch to the guys that slept above—Mike and Jamel—and they’re swinging their heads, talking loud and dancing. I’m in the room below them, and I need at least 6 hours of sleep,” said Majors of his experience with boys. “I can’t believe that was me up there doing that and now I’m the old guy. So, when they have those boom microphones and cameras in your face at seven in morning, oh my God that was tough. I don’t know how many people I almost went off on.”
So, one can imagine why playing with the Castro Rockdogs is therapeutic for Majors. When Majors worked with the team in 2002, the team became highly disappointed losing by one point in the semi-finals. Four years later, in 2006, the team won gold, so coming back two years later to play ball with some familiar faces wasn’t as disarming as playing with and meeting new faces. However, there were some adjustments this time around. Now in 2008, with a tight schedule, working fully time to support his lifestyle, and coming to a home to a camera crew, Majors was in a different kind of world.
As if the show hadn’t enough characters in one place. When guest stars like former NBA star John Amaechi and Olympic basketball gold medalist Sheryl Swoops walked into the loft, these icons had an overwhelming affect on the team. Now close friends with Amaechi, Majors originally was apprehensive to the idea of his cameo on the show. Upon hearing that he was going make a guest appearance on the show, the group became afraid that the show’s focus would shift to Amaechi. It never changed, however, as captain, Majors said that the ordeal was hard at first not only because teammates where talking to Amaechi instead of Majors but because Amaechi was in the league and Major couldn’t because he was openly gay to begin with. The relationship shifted, as the open-eared Amaechi gave his input when asked and encouraged the team to do their best.
Finishing up the show, he’s still in the dark about a second season with Logo. But, with his defined body type and pastor personality, a mystique charismatic flair to Majors is as man, he’s become a full-blown sex symbol in the process. This is somewhat an honor to someone who’s only been in the gay community an average of eight years ago and losing his virginity at 24 years old.
“When I was growing up in high school, I never thought of those things. I was always afraid of what people thought of me. I was always very skinny, ugly kid. At least I thought I was. There were times that girls would hit on me, but because of that fear I would never take it that far. Plus, when I went to church I wanted to do everything before Christ. I wanted a girlfriend that become my wife and on that day, when we’re marred, we become one with each other. By the time I was 20, I was the example of other students that were already having sex, that would talk to me,” Majors confessed. “After 17 years of being the ugly duckling, for the next 18, I can deal with being a sex symbol. That is, until my moisturizer run’s out.”
With big names slapped on advertisements and making cameos, Majors stands a league of his own, slowly becoming a household name. Modeling for over a year now, Majors has made cameos in Beyoncé’s “Freakum Dress” music video, sexy Aussiebum ads, and even helped co-host “Blatino Oasis” in Miami. He also works with a company on marketing, financing and investments. In addition, Majors is planning to write an autobiography with celebrated writer James Earl Hardy of the “B-boy Blues” fame and a to star in a steamy calendar, Majors says is hot. The calendar will introduce two other models, Majors hints is on the show and is to have a launch date in early 2009.
He’s also working to create a non-profit working with suicidal and homeless teens in New York because he’s outraged that the LGBT community make up 8 percent of the homeless in the city alone, “That’s ridiculous, especially because we’re in a recession. So, I’m providing a forum for their needs, because I know what it feels like,” Majors empathized.
Majors is a product of his experiences—from growing up in the Midwest from ugly duckling to bronzed sex symbol, from living in sunny San Francisco to being homeless for a short while in New York City, from closeted church boy to openly gay sports icon and reality TV superman—Majors has made his landmark.
“You know what? I might have never gotten to play in the NBA, and get to go to Beijing or something like that, but in the community that I get to represent in front of the world… just for that opportunity; I was given the chance to represent my city, to represent my family and to represent my friends. What more could you ask for?”

If you are interested in seeing the edited interview in Bleu Magazine, go here: http://www.nxtbook.com/splash/bleu/?nxturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nxtbook.com%2Fnxtbooks%2Fbleu%2F2009winter%2Findex.php

College Street Gallery Co-op (Buffalo Rising)

College Street Gallery Co-op
A palette paints Buffalo black and every color in between
By Marcus Scott
Buffalo Rising Magazine

Ribbons of chromaticity lick the walls of a small studio exhibit in the underbelly of the Allentown district, as a draping phosphorescent glow hits the walls and floor like a shaft of light slapping against a disco ball. Inside the four crème blushed walls are two men in glasses—one who is statuesque, with salt and pepper hair and a playful charm that borders on caricature and the other, who is stocky with champagne colored hair and a epigrammatic and monosyllabic dialogue that makes him all the more intriguing. Their names are Glenn E. Murray and Michael Mulley.
Only 12 years ago, during the post-grunge scene of 1997, Mulley, publisher of glossy zine ANGST at the time, opened the small art gallery and dubbed it the College Street Gallery Co-op with fellow Buffalo artistes. Already having his footing in photography and print, working with magazines and newspapers like Buffalo Spree Magazine, Artvoice and Canadian jazz magazine Coda, Mulley set out to add to the collective beauty of Buffalo. Once a tiny shack around the corner from its current sight, the College Street Gallery Co-op is pulling itself up from the bootstraps and is becoming a testimony to Mulley’s mission statement.
“I opened around the corner in this little teeny room in 1997, and in June 1998, when a space opened up, I moved here ever since. I have a really great room mate,” Mulley chuckles as he stares at the refined and pricey restaurant behind him. “I managed to be here 11 years.”
Giving local artistes the opportunity to showcase their work via susceptible venue allows more freedom of expression, speaking to the mind without words. And in this small studio, colors jump from the walls like a stuntman performing parkour, as the work of local artists such as photographer Robert Schultz and painter Candace Keegan, cake the walls with stunning visuals. Each work of art, rather it be a monochrome Polaroid print or runny splashes of greasepaint in a picture frame, speaks volumes from a metaphysical megaphone. He says, however, it wasn’t easy maintaining the gallery by himself and with their combined efforts Mulley and company the College Street Gallery Co-op, kept the hinges on the gallery’s doors greased, so other Buffalo residents could enjoy local art.
“It was sort of an economic reality, running out of artist,” Mulley said, looking around the studio, as the gala begins to start is exhibit. “I guess it cost more than it did 11 years ago.”
With an impressive range of fine art, the photographer says the art gallery tends to get more photography than any other art work; however more painting and sculpture work has been included in recent years. This time around, with more than 30 paintings and photos on the walls as well as a sculpture in the center of the gallery’s hard wood floor, the gallery’s nuance in Buffalo is burning bright—with art shows every four weeks.
Starting with a beautiful Evan Everhart piece, a smooth coffee table/mantelpiece-couch sculpture made of hardwood, sits under the draped lights like as if made as a shrine for the small gallery. What Mulley called great stuff in comparison to some of Everhart’s previous works, it looks like the gallery, as well as its art is taking on a new image: chic. Just look at the four-wall décor of the studio space, its surrounding neighbors, boxes of and bins of photos and painting for sale, and even the complementary entourage of budding artists greeting people at the doorways.
This time, the gallery is showing off an armada of Buffalo masterwork for the city’s culture connoisseurs. For example, there’s the work of Villa Maria College professor Francesco Amaya, an inveterate artist and regular at the gallery, whose work of four celebrated women in history is causing waves. The mural, created in black coal remnants, shows the women, including that of Eva Péron, standing side by side as if they were working the change the world, as they had decades ago. Other pictures are not as Glamorous and nerving as this on the right: A historical 1962 Ektachrome snapshot of an almost ethereal pair of legs in fishnets and high heels sits next to a series Buffalo landscape photos recently shot by Murray, which in turn, is next to a series of photos. This series of professional saturated black-and-white Kodak HIE infrared film that makes the room glow is known as “I Shot Lucy,” a cluster of attention-grabbing snapshots of local artiste and photographer Lucy Yau in an idyllic wood, shot two years ago. Sitting opposite of Amaya’s work, on the far left, is the colorfully-schematic Lolita piece by Candice Keegan, of a flaxen girl tasting the corn syrup of her large lollipop sucker.
Rather than showing off the supercilious and conceited monotone of wine-and-cheese art aristocracy, the gallery puts Buffalo illuminati in its display case, showing off a chronological and significant feel that can only be expressed by the cities residents. They are the storytellers and trendsetters of Buffalo, and through art, they are aid in holding on to the city’s history.
“You’ve got a photo from 1962, next to Glen who is a novice photographer next to Nick which is a 20-year-old motion photographer next to a 45-year-old carpenter next to a 57-year-old motion photographer. It’s amazing that we have that diversity and I think that’s really neat.”

If you are interested in seeing the edited version: http://www.buffalorising.com/2009/02/college-street-gallery-co-op.html#SlideFrame_0

Tanya-Renee (Krave Siren)

Texan Krave siren, Tanya-Renee from Grand Prarie is more than a stunning coke-bottle silhouette, she’s a super-vixen. With a bust of 36DD, a 22-inch waist, a hip-size of 28 and standing at 5’4,” the Starlett TV knockout is the walking embodiment of an ebony Jessica Rabbit.
Born in Landsthul, Germany, the 27-year-old army brat works full-time as an Entertainment Consultant, enjoys viewing college football in her spare time, working out, dancing until she “falls down,” shopping until she’s penniless, and is very single. With a rebellious streak, she enjoys eating anything her trainer says is “bad,” evident by her “Yes, I am up-to-no-good” smile. And if you’re not a funny man, its fine—she has the superpower to laugh at just about anything.
This Krave Siren with an award-winning smile describes the perfect guy as having the cash flow of Bill Gates and the smile of Denzel Washington. But don’t bat an eye at our siren, she’s adventurous; maybe it’s her inner army brat. Tanya-Renee says she would most want to visit Venezuela simply because “there is a whole side” to her that she doesn’t know about herself that she’s like to discover for herself. Maybe there’s a door waiting to slam open, and her internal exhibitionist will work itself through the periphery of her limits and surprise even most unautocratic freethinking men.
Self-described as "The kind of woman every man wants, but shouldn't marry,” maybe Tanya-Renee is a fantasy, but a pretty good one.

-Marcus Scott
October 2008

Krave Magazine

Death by iPod, the death of record stores (Bengal News Online)

Death by Ipod
Record stores are closing everywhere in Buffalo because of recent surge in technology.
By Marcus Scott

With the ascension of iTunes and Rhapsody, along with share Web sites LimeWire and SendSpace, television and music have become impersonal and less communal.
On Jan. 20, 2007, Home of the Hits, one of Buffalo's premier record stores, closed its doors. Following the trend, Artvoice reported New World Records, another independent record store established in 1984, moved to 2304 Delaware Avenue before closing its doors for good on May 18.
Critics (like those of Artvoice) finger the blame on the recent surge in technology. Since the birth of file sharing with the creation of mp3 Napster in June 1999, downloading and file sharing have taken the world by storm.
Music stores everywhere began to close their doors rapidly. Record Theatre at 1800 Main St., is one of the few record stores in Buffalo remaining.
"Local record stores are essential to the corporate sales," said Amherst local Ashley Southard, 21, a sales representative at Record Theatre. "I wouldn't say that [local] music stores are essential, but corporate music stores [offer] less diverse music; it'll be a more conformed conservative sound. I can't imagine FYE carrying the underground films we sell or a lot of independent hip-hop artists we carry."
Maybe this is the reason several musicans and local artists have had little success breaking through national broadcast.
"People come in and they only know two words, and sometimes the Internet can't help you. Here you have people who can help you, you can come get an opinion," said Southard.
When its doors opened as a pioneering record store in 1976, Record Theatre was the largest music store in the United States. Staff say that underground artists thrived.
"If a deejay wants to get their music heard we can promote it or if a show out of town is coming, we sell tickets. In many ways, we're better than the Internet," sales representative Shawn Gomaz, 22, of Buffalo said.
With music stores falling because of technology, I believe that the Record Theatre has managed to stay afloat because of its unique fan base. Southard and Gomaz agreed.
"It's knowing your inventory that applies to where you're located," said Southard. "Our owner is also business savvy and our business understands the business is changing; a way better sound quality."
Its hard work being an artiste! I have well over 400 records and counting in my bedroom alone. There's nothing like opening the compact disc of your favorite band because it's like you have a piece of them.
"[At a record store] you get personal help, sound quality, and album art. MP3s don't sound as good as records and if you're computer crashes, you're music's gone," said Southard.

**OLD EDIT** Corinne Stevens for Art Nouveau (never published)

“No Vaseline: Corinne Stevens, doesn’t KO, but leaves the ring swinging”
Corinne Stevens sounds like a raging bull in the corner of the ring with her modern The Oddity; Careful, mess with the bull—you get the horns.
Review by Marcus Scott
Art Nouveau Magazine

The sound is proverbial, its kitsch and on first listen, its even a futurist in the current music scene. With its spacey gush-of-wind computer synth voiceover, Corinne Stevens’ “The Oddity” explodes into a robot psychedelic hip-hop tinkering time bomb. Just listen to the cellular ringtone-inspired “Club Kidz”—a marching band sound, megaphone hip-hop revolutionized club tune that sounds like a hybrid of power tool industrialized N.E.R.D. production and a slick Kayne West electrosynth orchestration. But what sells an interesting record? The crafting is in small hooks: The lyric-savvy Stevens’ even combats the Nas ideology which has infamously brought clamor amongst music critics about the fall of hip-hop: “Hip-hop will never be dead, until it’s gone and buried,” Stevens’ echoes.
Stevens is an oddity, but doesn’t do the extraordinary. Yes, it’s all here—the old school hip-hop jive (“Across the Globe”), the hip-hop Neo-soul flows (“Morning Sunrise”), even the funky UK grime backbeats (“Lets Go!”). What works is the sexy, automaton wah-wah club sound that radiates from Stevens’ gender bending vocals (“I am Glam Right Now”) and interesting cipher in lyrics which talk about everything under the sun from growing in the ghetto to rehashing issues to emanating self.
There are some dead spots on the record. “Set you Free,” a snappy techno groove is nothing special. Its simple delivery is extremely contemporary in the music at the moment and if released to a deejay’s devices may receive little airplay in the club markets because of its empty synthpop sound. In comparison to other smooth tracks like Omarion’s “Entourage” or even some of MC Lite’s earlier work, this single alone draws to many comparisons to contemporaries like Lil’ Mama and Kid Sister. T
Between skits, Stevens quotes that she’d like to create her own genre. But, it’s too contemporary, and the music doesn’t resonate or may have the resilience or stamina to be played infinite at one’s discretion. Key point: The record needs more hormonal diversity. With its fidget-funky buzzing loops and berserk-drumbeat jazz, a strategy that’s worked for quite some time on standard radio, Stevens has unfortunately worn the dunce-hat for repetition and the album is more of the same.
Nonetheless, with such a unique, urban-queen-in-distress vocal (something missing in hip-hop) and a solid rap scheme (also missing), this may very well be a simple work out for Stevens.

If you are interested in this artist, go to: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=393009241