Nicole Symmonds: July 2007 Archives

After weeks of controversy, dropped sponsorship and a last minute name change, BET aired the series premiere of "We Got to Do Better," formerly known as "Hot Ghetto Mess."

For starters, the show was a hot ghetto mess. The title change made the day before the show, did nothing to save the show from its ignorance. HGM--as I will call it despite the title change and because it is the better abbreviation of the two—takes viewers on a 30-minute ride through the underbelly of society where Ms. Peaches sings about loving chicken neck bones and white bikers blow prophylactics up over their heads. In between these ridiculously ghetto clips, HGM attempts to edify people through a segment called "Hot Ghetto Mess Street Walking." The HGM street-walker asks random people simple black history questions, but then makes it look like white people have more knowledge--or at least more confidence in it--than most black people.

And so the show proceeds with this mix of ghetto-ocity and edutainment hosted by Charlie Murphy, the brother of Eddie, and another reason not to take the show too seriously." After wasting 27 minutes of my time, I was stopped dead in my tracks by an animation-skit called "Bid 'Em In" by Oscar Brown. Brown plays a slave auctioneer selling a black woman into servitude. He captured the slave trade from the Middle Passage to the stage where men and women where sold as chattel and considered nothing but workers and machines of procreation for their owners.

I could tell that "Thirsty," Marvin Sapp's seventh album, was going to be a hit from the cover alone. Sapp looked youthful and vibrant, and he had a sparkle in his eyes that hinted at things to come--which I found quizzical considering he lost his father, his musical mentor, and his spiritual father back-to-back before recording this album.

The first single from the album, "Never Would Have Made It," came to him while he was grieving the death of his father, and the somberness of the song is certainly palpable. Sapp's unmistakable voice resonates with gratitude as much as it hints at profound loss. But, never one to keep music at a somber pace, Sapp gives listeners an equal measure of "dance all night" praise songs and "lie prostrate in a puddle of tears" worship anthems.

Songs such as "Praise Him in Advance" and "Shout Unto God" are great for personal devotion time as they are for church choirs during corporate worship. And the title-track "Thirsty" is a gut-wrenching request for God's anointing, perfect for anyone stuck in the spiritual wilderness.

The album flows seamlessly from high-impact praise songs to low-impact, but intense, worship songs that will take worshipers on an incredibly refreshing ride. New and old Sapp fans will fall in love with "Thirsty." Get quenched today!

I've always been fascinated with the dark side. In college I contemplated going Goth--inasmuch as a Hot Topic shirt could take me to the dark side. I once flipped through a copy of the Satanic Bible--not because I was up for conversion; I was merely curious. And to this day I watch scary movies because I enjoy being scared. But none of these things move me more than pondering the existence of hell.

I jump at the opportunity to watch documentaries on the underworld, such as the History Channel's "Hell: The Devil's Domain," which provides an in-depth secular and biblical history of Hades. And so I also enjoyed watching 20/20's special titled "Hell: Our Fear and Fascination" hosted by Bill Weir and airing tonight on ABC at 10 p.m.

The one-hour report is split into five segments that go further than giving the man in the red suit holding a trident a little air time. This report puts a face on hell by pointing out its future inhabitants, documenting the lives of people who are believed to have gone to hell, and interviewing people who survived hell on earth. The most notable of the latter segment are Ishmael Beah, who at the age of 13 watched a rebel army slaughter his entire village in Sierra Leone and was subsequently brainwashed into joining the vicious army, and Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who wrote through the pain of his experience.

But no conversation about hell would be complete if the question of "What if hell doesn't exist?" didn't come into play. To answer that question, Weir interviews Bishop Carlton Pearson, the former mega-church preacher who was ousted by his congregation and his denomination when he started preaching the "gospel of inclusion," which states that everyone is going to heaven. From his current pulpit, Pearson boldly states that "hell wasn't God's intention, but man's invention."

As journalistic coverage goes, this special on hell is fair and balanced and worth an hour of your time. But after that hour, it will be necessary to redeem the time in prayer just in case you start to have second thoughts.

Before the show aired, I decided that it was going to be a flop because BET is known for taking original concepts and turning them into failures. But I was pleasantly surprised within the first five minutes when not only did I see the parents of the cast members, but I saw them holding their children accountable for their behavior, which is a rare occurrence for the show's prototype.

Parental accountability aside, the regular antics of privileged teenagers ensue. They spend copious amounts of their parents' money, talk about how great their lives are--based on their access to that money--and spend equal amounts of time judging the less fortunate, who happens to be a girl named Staci. Staci is the one middle-class girl on the show who doesn't live in Baldwin Hills. She is from a neighborhood that the rich girls like to call the "J's." What are the "J's?" I am not really sure. But it's clear that it is an undesirable 'hood far away from the manicured lawns and beautiful vistas of Baldwin Hills.

To show the stark contrast of their lives, we see both sides go shopping before a big party. While the rich girls shop at luxury boutiques like Christian Audigier for custom-made Ed Hardy t-shirts, Staci takes a trip to Rainbow, a bargain basement for the broke-but-fashionable teenager. As Staci cringes at $20 price tags, the Baldwin Hills girls drop $500 on an outfit without remorse. The differences don't stop there. You can see the huge gap between Staci and the Baldwin Hills girls in their vernacular and sensibilities.

All in all, I loved "Baldwin Hills." It provided--what I believe--is a balanced portrayal of what life is like for upper-class and middle-class African Americans, which is something we so rarely see on television outside of the syndicated episodes of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" and "The Cosby Show." This season of "Baldwin Hills" will either bridge the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" in the black community, or further widen it. Only time will tell ...