Feels So Good

DISCO GRAPHIC

LAST WEEK WE heard about Jill Scott's thoughts on the subject of mixed race couplings.

One of the reasons her attack cut so deeply, for me, was that I actually liked her. I love neo-soul. D'Angelo and Maxwell are up on pedestals. Criticise at your peril. I named my weekly news round-up after Glen Lewis' debut, World Outside My Window. And although I don't relate to female artists in the same way seemingly every other fag does, I have a certain respect for Angie Stone, Erykah Badu, and (until recently) Jill Scott. However you interpret her views (ka-os|theory crush and literary genius Taylor Siluwé strongly disagrees with my take. But unlike certain blogging ex-friends he can fight his corner without morphing into a deranged bitch), Jill Scott isn't there for everyone. There's going to be a forgotten few who don't feel the love. Maybe Maxwell and D'Angelo don't believe in unlimited love, but unlike Ms Scott, they haven't drawn a line in the sand. Let's rewind to 1998, and a black British DJ called Sonique, who released a record called Feels So Good, two years before it would gain global chart success, and was promptly hijacked by the mainstream and given a crumby video that middle-class Coke-snorting thirty-somethings would approve of. But before that, back in 1998, there was this video, set in a cruising groundmoonlit forest, in which a black boy and white boy dance with one another, embrace, and lovingly caress one another's faces. That sort of positive imagery, shown on national television alongside Britney Spears and Nelly, meant the world to me as a teen, to whom mainstream gay culture was anathema. It was a big "Fuck you" to that world of phrases like White is right, rice queen and jungle fever. I love Sonique for giving me that precious gift. Ain't it sad that kids today will only hear about Jill Scott and her "wince" at couples like the boys in this video.