I could feel the energy, though, of fools feeling I was an inch too East Oakland, years before I was told.” I did not view New York City as the center of the cultural universe. Smith battled racism and sexism in multiple professional settings. “I hadn’t gone to NYU, or Columbia, or Brown,” she writes. “In fact, I had no college degree. A few years later she moved on to become an editor-at-large at Time, Inc, and editor at Billboard, The Root and ESPN’s The Undefeated. By 1994 she had been named editor-in-chief of Vibe magazine, making her the first woman to helm a national music magazine. But Smith makes the inspired choice to include those with a smaller spotlight - among them 1960s girl group The Dixie Cups, Linda “Peaches” Greene of ‘70s duo Peaches & Herb, and Broadway songbird Stephanie Mills, who had a string of hits in the ‘80s.Īn Oakland native, Smith, 56, received her first paid writing assignment in 1989 - covering a Natalie Cole concert for ten cents per word. Scan the table of contents and the usual suspects are there: Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Aretha Franklin. Subtitled “A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop,” Smith puts the story of Black women singers into her shimmering pop music memoir, interweaving their stories with her own rise as one of the nation’s preeminent music writers. The result is intoxicating. In “Shine Bright,” music critic Danyel Smith makes it plain she wants “credit to be given where credit is due.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |