"Two things you?ll notice straight away about 19 year old Jentina. First, she's gorgeous, with the kind of natural good looks that stop traffic. Second, she?s a real personality with a passion for the music she's making, not another pop puppet with nice hair and teeth and nothing underneath.I realise now why I never read these things because its annoyed me somewhat. Time for a list. Five things:
She grew up listening to Nas, Biggie and Tupac and fell in love with hip hop. She would spend hours as a kid trying to write lyrics of her own. So when she finally decided to sort her life out, she knew music would be the key. She moved to London and got a job in the hip Soho clothes store/gallery Zoltar The Magnificent. She would stand behind the counter with her laptop making beats and 'just wishing'. A chance meeting and one 30 minute rap later, her manager invited Jentina to the studio and the rest is the stuff that dreams are made of.
Jentina?s debut single, 'Bad Ass Strippa' is an lesson in pure attitude and low-end funk and one of the most accomplished debuts you are likely to hear for years!! With New York City's very own legend Jimmy Douglas on production duties, Jentina's whispered chorus and the warm bass that drips out of the speakers propels the track into the realms of the classic. Throw in an O'Jays 'For The Love Of Money' sample which could hardly exemplify the song?s attitude more directly, and you have a speaker-quakingly fine record that will sound just as at home on daytime radio as in the underground clubs.
(1) In the accompanying photo Jentina is demonstratably attractive. Except she's wearing a tracksuit which just screams 'outside the chippy with me mates and white cider on a satdy nigh' So full marks for picking up on the zeitgeist of the target audience.
(2) The title of the song. I remember a few years ago when The Prodigy were kicked around the hit parade for producing the song 'Smack My Bitch Up'. The message we have here is that it wouldn't have caused the same controversy if it had been sung by Jennifer Lopez.
(3) And given the title, publicist thinks it 'will sound just as at home on daytime radio as in the underground clubs'. When I listened to 'daytime radio' as a child, Blondie was as racey as it got. For the purposes of this missive and to give a balanced view I've visited the website so you don't have to and listened to the thirty-second preview. It's not any better or worse than anything else in the charts, nothing write home about. The song is basically a masterclass in exotic dancing. Said publicist and so the record company apparently think its acceptable to introduce kids to the world of strip clubs at three in the afternoon. I should mention here that the above was accompanyed with: "CALL THE BOX on 09012 930 100 and vote # 285 for the brand new video for Jentina's hot new debut single 'BAD ASS STRIPPA'!!" So they want people to pay for the 'pleasure' of seeing this as well. But the content. The title. Daytime radio. Something doesn't add up. [Before you get all huffy about free speech movements, I'm right with you. Its just there are times of the day. I agree with the need for a watershed and film ratings. It just feels like childhoods are being shortened more and more.]
(4) 'the hip Soho clothes store/gallery Zoltar The Magnificent' What is this a seventies teen film parody? All it took was for her to rap for thirty seconds before being offered a record contract. Is this is just a 'street' version of how Pete Waterman infected The Reynolds Girls on the world?
(5) That said publicist actually thought that this arr-shucks gush was the perfect way of selling a track with attitude to the public. Its the music equivalent of the blurbs which I never read on the back of video boxes and just as insipid. Take out the names and title and put in someone else's and it becomes a joke:
"Fraser Hines's debut single, 'Punch and Judy Man' is a lesson in pure attitude and low-end funk and one of the most accomplished debuts you are likely to hear for years!! With New York City's very own legend Jimmy Douglas on production duties, Fraser's whispered chorus and the warm bass that drips out of the speakers propels the track into the realms of the classic. Throw in an O'Jays 'For The Love Of Money' sample which could hardly exemplify the song's attitude more directly, and you have a speaker-quakingly fine record that will sound just as at home on daytime radio as in the underground clubs."Effectively its the writing style of a teen mag used to sell something which is surely meant for a more mature demographic. Didn't you people learn anything from the alco-pop debate?
If my conscience is pricked that someone sat down and wrote this and it's their job and they may hate their job and they're just trying to make a living and its being targeted at a different market anyway, all I want to say is this. Yes, I've written some pretty purple prose myself (some of it no doubt in this very post) but look at how you're portraying a real person. Without any irony, your reducing her to being a thing. You might say 'she?s a real personality with a passion for the music she's making, not another pop puppet with nice hair and teeth and nothing underneath' but that has the effect of making the reader think that either she is all those things and you're just trying to hide it by protesting too much or that if she's everything you say she is why aren't you letting her speak for herself? Somewhere along the line, Girl Power has become wholesale objectification. That can't be good.
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