So who is Tanya Pointer? She is the woman who called herself Nonchalant and in the late 90s released the song \u201c5 O\u2019Clock\u201d. It\u2019s a favorite tune of mine and it\u2019s on my mix cd \u201cActs of Female Aggression\u201d that I have been listening to again. Forgive me if I don\u2019t have the lyrics dead on.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s really real, when I feel the way that do right now
\nI see all my brothers underground
\nPushing up daisies, man, it amazes me
\nThat you can\u2019t see where you\u2019re gonna be
\nA statistic, everybody\u2019s gone cold ballistic
\nIf you had a good day, damn, I must have missed it
\nCause you mad at the Universe, going to hell with everybody else
\nCause you want your own first
\nI got the urge to let you in on a little secret
\nCause you keep dying to keep it
\nAll the killing that you\u2019re feeling is from within
\nFor the copper check the color of you skin
\nWhy lie? I couldn\u2019t try even if I had to
\nBorn with the bullet-proof vest when I had you
\nA black woman trying to get through to the few
\nSo you can lead the next crew<\/p>\n
Well Mr. Black Man tell me where you\u2019re heading
\nThe last few years I watched while you were shedding
\nPounds and pounds off of the growth of population
\nSoon we won\u2019t be able to have a strong black nation
\nA shooting here, a stabbing there, will it ever stop
\nCause now you\u2019re dying from the dose of the crack rock
\nI\u2019m just a Nubian Queen that needs a king to stand strong
\nAnd try to press on
\nIt\u2019s not a white man\u2019s finger on the trigger
\nCar-jacks, drive-by\u2019s, calling each other \u201cnigga\u201d
\nI\u2019m not here to scold but rather shape and mold
\nA young black mind that won\u2019t live to grow old
\nCause you\u2019re fronting, smoking on the blunt and
\nDown with your friends cause you think you\u2019re making ends,
\nBut you\u2019re not
\nAnd it\u2019s the truth of the matter
\nYour brother is getting skinny cause you want your pockets fatter<\/p>\n
Tanya Pointer, aka Nonchalant, lived in Washington, D.C. Early every morning she would head into work and the streets would be empty except for her heading in, and the drug dealers and their buyers. She wrote \u201c5 O\u2019Clock\u201d in response to that. It peaked at #24 on the Billboard\u2019s Hot 100. It also set the stage for D.C. to have its own rap identity. Then, she was gone.<\/p>\n
Driving into work the other day I heard this song and started to wonder, where is Tanya now? What is she doing? Does she still feel the same way she did as when she wrote \u201c5 O\u2019Clock\u201d?<\/p>\n
What appeals to me about this song is its lyrics. They\u2019re clever, and very rarely does she cross over into preachy. Nonchalant assumed that her listeners were smart enough to grasp the larger message. Between verses two male rappers have says. They open with \u201cWhy should I do right and suffer?\u201d I\u2019m sure the mind set of many of the dealers she saw every morning. They ask who is she, because see he\u2019s a big man, and the other male rapper confirms that the former is a big man. Nonchalant counters with what she feels \u201cis the truth of the matter, that your brother is getting skinny cause you want your pockets fatter.\u201d Tanya presumes that her listeners know why that line answers the question of why should I do right and suffer. Because those who profit from the destruction of others can\u2019t ever truly be the heroes of the drama.<\/p>\n
With incredibly smart turns of phrase, such as \u201cI got the urge to let you in on a little secret, cause you keep dying to keep it\u201d and \u201cborn with a bullet proof vest when I had you\u201d, Nonchalant created an important contribution to the hip hop community. She let her listeners clearly see what life was like in Washington, D.C. and expressed her outrage, desperation, and dismay at a community that couldn\u2019t seem to see what she did. Nonchalant challenged her listeners to strive for more, with a good flow. \u201c5 O\u2019Clock\u201d is what rap music is supposed to be. So I ask again, where have you gone Tanya Pointer?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rebecca wants to know, where have you gone Tanya Pointer?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}