The former Vibe editor and podcaster tells Jezebel about how she wove the story of her life with the stories of the Black women artists she loves.
DANYEL SMITH: I kind of always knew the ladies that I wanted to talk about. I was very committed to writing about the people that we think of first: Aretha, Mariah, Janet. But I was also very committed to a large percentage of the book being devoted to people that we don’t think of first. So I was stuck because I felt just what you are mentioning right now, which is, if this is supposed to be an encyclopedic book about Black women in pop, I don’t see how you ever finish it.
I mean, I’m not going to sit up and act like that’s not true. I wanted to make sure that I cover the detail of Black women in music because I feel like so often Black women are written about in summary or as firsts, which is, you know, fine. It’s needed. I mean, we know all about R.E.M.’s first days in Athens, Georgia.
Not really. One: I like a lot. Two: I make a lot of room to find things even within things I don’t like. Also, I’ve talked more shit in this lifetime about music than really most anybody. I really feel like I gave myself over to that in the ‘90s. I gavewhen it came out, and I stand by it. I gave Harry Belafonte such a bad review in theI’ll go there if it matters enough to me.
The thing is, I could continue this list. None of this is airy. It’s very clear to me what can be done. It’s not, “Oh, if we could just all just, you know, like, just let Black women know they are better.” Hashtag BlackWomenAreJamming. Like, okay, but we need to let Donna Summer in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a first ballot—not after she’s dead. That’s a specific and egregious error that can be pointed to.
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