Video Spotlight: Dessa's "Dixon's Girl"

Life's busy, but I wanted to highlight that Dessa Darling, an Minneapolis-based author, spoken word artist, and emcee that I really dig just dropped her first full length album -- A Badly Broken Code (which you can get more info about, download a free track off of, and/or buy here). Dessa's a member of the Doomtree Hip-Hop Collective and is also a founding member of The Boy Sopranos, an a cappella group. And she teaches composition, songwriting, and hip-hop at the college level. (Awesome, right?!)

I love the strong voice and raw talent she brings to her music. Swing by her MySpace page to hear a great sampling of her work, and below is the first video single, Dixon's Girl, from her album:


Being a woman in music, especially in hip-hop is not easy. Dessa wrote up a little essay at the turn of the year about her experience being a woman in hip-hop. Here it is:

My membership in Doomtree has been the largest single factor in my career as a hip hop artist. I make music with with smart, funny, good-hearted guys who aren’t particularly concerned with the fact that I’m a woman. So my gender hasn’t played a very large role in my process of making music. My gender has, however, affected the presentation of that music.

The fact that I’m female seems to be more interesting to listeners and critics than it is to the people I work with. And I think I understand why. Women are rare in hip hop and novelty is interesting. My private fear, as a person who hopes to have a sustainable career as an artist, is that people might become interested in me for the wrong reasons. Youth is brief and beauty is fleeting, and I don’t want to tether my reputation to variables that are so temporary–and that are completely distinct from my art and from my character. The challenge for me has been to find a way to work as a rapper without diminishing my gender (in effort to fit into a pretty masculine environment) or exalting it (for some easy coverage). It’s a surprisingly fine line, and honestly I’ve made missteps on either side of it.

The other primary challenge is probably even better known to actresses than to rappers. It involves trying to understand the motivations of men who profess to be interested in professional collaboration. To be totally frank, I’m a little nervous that this paragraph will come off as whiny–but it’s an honest account of my experience, so here goes:

As an artist, it’s marvelously exciting when someone you admire offers you a professional opportunity–it’s one of the best feelings in this line of work. As a single, female artist in her late twenties, one of the worst feelings you can have is when you realize that someone has offered you a professional opportunity because he’s hoping for a romantic encounter. The artist part of you feels disappointed because the proposed collaboration was not motivated by a respect for your art. The female part of you feels insulted for being deceived. The human part of you feels embarrassed for having hoped…and then been duped. Repeat this experience at a regular interval, year after year, and it’s hard not to feel a little jaded about the way that people work.

But all said and done…I love being a woman. And I love being an artist. And I’m privileged to live in a culture that allows me to be both in almost any manner that I please. The challenges are offset by the genuine responses that I get from listeners, and by the thrill I get working with the other artists in Doomtree.

Give her a listen. It's good stuff. Promise.