Published: Monday - June 23, 2008
Words by Monique "Marvelous Mo" Balcarran
Amanda Diva (Photo: DivaWorks Inc.)
Just when rap fans thought female rappers were destined to go to jail, Amanda Diva comes to save the day. We all have encountered this diva at some point. If we didn't catch her on VH1's "Best Week Ever" making us laugh, we experienced her journalistic skills writing for hip-hop magazines. If we didn't catch her "Breakfast at Diva's" Sirius Radio show, then we came across her spoken words as a two-time performer on Russell Simmons's "Def Poetry Jam." That's not mentioning her accomplishments as an author and a painter. No matter how we heard of Amanda Diva, her achievements tell us she's more than a pretty face.
Before 2007 ended, she did a 21-city tour as a member of Floetry. In recent months, she completed her first installment of her "Experience Trilogy" called Life Experience, she just got off of Lupe Fiasco's The Cool Tour, and she just released her video for "Windows Over Harlem." Q-Tip said "All Amanda Diva needs is a mic and a reason," so BallerStatus decided to talk to this Columbia University graduate and share her reasons why she's behind the mic these days. We dissected her new video, gentrification in her neighborhood, her struggles as a female rapper, her Floetry experience, and her being the silent fourth member of the Fugees.
BallerStatus.com: How long have you been a poet and an MC?
Amanda Diva: I started poetry in the summer of 2000, but I would say I didn't consider myself a poet until people were coming up to me saying "Thank you for that!" It's like to me, you're not a poet until you move people or until you make people think differently than they did when they got there. Historians write the facts and poets write the feelings according to what's going on. You don't become an official poet until you're able to write those feelings accurately and have people moved by them.
As an MC, I've been rhyming for a long time, but I didn't feel like I was an MC completely until I put out Life Experience and I got people saying the words back to me in shows. That really was the affirmation of like "Oh damn! I'm really a rapper!" Honestly to this day, I will be on stage and I will laugh to myself like "Look at you rapping!" (laughs) Because I fought it for so long and there were just so many frustrating moments and times of me wishing I could pursue this dream of mine and I couldn't rhyme on beat, damn it!
BallerStatus.com: One of the best aspects about you are your accomplishments and how well diverse you are in this industry. You're a radio and television personality, poet, MC, singer, author, journalist, and a scholar. Are you afraid to be pigeon holed as a poet or an MC?
Amanda Diva: More so just as a poet because for some reason people feel like when you're a poet, you can't be an MC, which is obviously ridiculous to me being that they are the same thing, essentially. They pigeon holed you or they stigmatize you where you can't say anything that's not socially conscious and you can't do anything that's not in the lane as revolutions or politics. If you have that poet stamp on you, it's like you're all of a sudden labeled at a certain level of righteousness that, honestly, nobody can really live up to. For me it's just important that I show people that I am an artist, and I am an MC, and a singer, and I am not just a poet trying to do poetry on beats. I am a rapper.
BallerStatus.com: Recently you see Remy getting sentenced to jail for 8 years. Then you have Foxy Brown and Lil Kim going to jail. How do you stay motivated when you witness these types of stints where they tried to gain street cred and publicity to get their names exposed?
Amanda Diva: I mean, for me, it's like I think I am really fortunate to not have to solely rely on music to live. I think that for a lot of those women, music became a do-or-die situation and when you're in that type of situation, you're forced to do things to keep up what you're doing that you probably wouldn't do if your back wasn't so far up against the wall. I think that in hip-hop, this protecting your image thing has gotten so out of hand in terms of what you got to do to protect it and how important it is to do. So for your career, these people have been forced to really do drastic things that are not really conducive to living your life in the best positive way. So I think I am fortunate to where I think I don't have that monkey on my back. If the music doesn't work out, I got other options. Also I think that allows me to exercise a little bit more freedom than them folks who feel like "O.K., I got to move according to these rules because I have to play this game," and unfortunately, the rules of this game are that you have an image you better keep or you're a sell out.
BallerStatus.com: So was it a conscious decisions to have all these different titles and experiences under your belt?
Amanda Diva: I mean that's just the way it turned out. I was always the kid that was in a lot of different lessons, so it's no surprise that I would grow up to be an adult that's in a whole bunch of different fields. Doing all those different things I'm someone who never felt like I need to not do those things and actually that was advice given to me on a regular basis. "You're doing too much. You need to just be this," and I feel like that's such a wack way of looking at things. If you are able to do a number of things very well, then you should be doing a number of things because the reality is this world and life is too wishy-washy to just be relying on just one thing.
BallerStatus.com: On the topic of images, we have a lot of negativity in the hip-hop game now days. A lot of rappers who do make a lot of money or who are very influential in the business tend to take negative directions or say negative things that young kids today tend to act out on their daily activities in school. You coming in to the business as a rapper, how important is it to you to have that influence over young people?
Amanda Diva: I always say this when people want to go and do some f***ed up sh**: they don't go listening to Barry Manalo, they go to listening to some hard "Come with me, Hail Mary / N**** run quick, see," you know what I'm saying? Music drives people; music affects you as much as folks are going to say "This is just entertainment, this ain't something to live by." Music, as we know for centuries, has been something that many people live by. Black people in Africa fought apartheid through music. For us to ignore the power of music and the power of our voice in order say whatever we want, because that's what we want to say, is really doing people and kids an injustice. For me, I'm not going to just do just happy time music because the world isn't just made of lemon meringue and lemonade. I do feel I do need to make a conscious decision to make music that people can learn with, grow with, and live with, and that is not detrimental to them. It's important that we do that for these kids because I feel like the world that we live in now is worse and worse in terms of giving kids a positive image to look up to. There are far more negative examples for them to follow than positive.
BallerStatus.com: One of the most powerful MCs that are missed today is Lauryn Hill. Your vocal and lyrical skills make people compare you to her. Was she one of the artists who influenced you coming up as an artist?
Amanda Diva: I rhyme because of Lauryn Hill. I started writing because my boy Maurice was like "Hey, have you ever thought of rapping?" I was like "No." He was like "You have a really good voice, you should try it." I was like "O.K." Every MC has somebody that they idolize and kind of got direction from and when they say they don't, they're lying. I wrote all of my first verses as the fourth member of The Fugees. I have a whole rhyme book of fourth verses for The Score. Often times I be writing a rhyme and think "How would Lauryn do this?" Not necessarily to copy her, but more so to step up the caliber of what I'm doing.
BallerStatus.com: Since you were the fourth member of The Fugees, what would you say would be the best rhyme you wrote out of the whole album?
Amanda Diva: (laughs) I know I wrote a duzey to "Manifest," I'll tell you that.
BallerStatus.com: Where would you say is the livest place you preformed?
Amanda Diva: Atlanta and actually Cali from top to bottom is just live. From The Bay to San Diego ... live!
BallerStatus.com: Have you ever thought about living there and actually trying to see what happens with your music?
Amanda Diva: I literally just turned to my mother just now and said "I think I'm going to back to Cali at some point." I was born in L.A. I lived there until I was 8 and I mean I do think I will eventually be bi-coastal. I'll always be a New Yorker though. I think in terms of pursuing music, to do so in Cali requires a lot more bread than it does [in New York]. In Cali you need a whip. I don't have the level of connects in Cali that I do here, so I would love to do that at some point, but I just have to wait for the right time.
BallerStatus.com: You recently went on tour with Lupe Fiasco on The Cool tour and you did a couple of cities there. You also did a 21-city tour as a member of Floetry. What were they like?
Amanda Diva: The Floerty experience was definitely a dichotomy of ridiculousness and dopeness because on the one hand, the music was dope. We were doing House of Blues. The fans were amazing, so the experience itself was something that is once in a life time. On the other hand, you know, I'm thrown in a situation that was made very clear, but wasn't carried out. Natalie [Stewart] leaving the group and me replacing her was not relayed explicitly to the fans, and Marsha [Ambrosius] wasn't supportive, so it was really me and the fans alone in that situation. I would have to, essentially, win over a crowd every night by myself even though Marsha's on stage with me and that was difficult. It was a learning experience that definitely showed me that I'm even stronger than I thought.
The one thing that occurred on both the Lupe tour and The Floetry tour is that I really became aware of people wanting a female MC, and that's contrary to popular belief. Folks will really have you believe that nobody wants that. Ain't nobody checking for that. Folks really loved what I was doing. I had people come to the show and look me in my face and say, "Get off the stage, Bitch!" and at the end of the show come and say "I just want to say I like this Floetry more than the last Floetry, and I think you're dope."
BallerStatus.com: For you to gain that amount of respect from all of the fans who were really doubting you, that must have been really rewarding.
Amanda Diva: Hell yeah it was very rewarding and encouraging for me. That pushed me to put out Life Experience by myself.
BallerStatus.com: Hip-hop is so male dominated now days, but you're coming out at a different angle. Do you feel you have the hand to revive hip-hop on a feminine aspect?
Amanda Diva: I think it would be really presumptuous for me to sit here like, "I'ma save hip-hop." Because I think there's so much to be saved and I don't know if I have the means to do that. I do think that what I would like to do is just rekindle the love for hip-hop for the folks that thought it was dead used to have. If I do that, then I feel like I've done an amount of saving that a lot of people didn't put a lot of energy towards doing.
BallerStatus.com: So about your album, how did you come up with the concept of the "Experience Trilogy?"
Amanda Diva: Well, when I came back from the Floetry tour, there were a couple of independents that were interested in putting out the "Experience Trilogy," but they were more interested in doing it like in '08 and they wanted to drop in March. I was too impatient to that. I knew I needed to drop at the end of '07 in order to capitalize on that buzz that I built from the Floetry tour, but also to set myself up to go full force in 2008, so I was just trying to think what I could do. Apparently, I woke up at 3 a.m. and was like "EUREKA! I'll do a trilogy in EPs!" I didn't want to a mixtape because those were just full of bull, and I wasn't ready to do an album, so I figured I can do EPs because they're small enough to be economical, but they are legit enough to mean something in the market place. And it was the perfect match of those two things, so I decided that I needed to do a trilogy so that it would be some breath to it for people to connect to. So that's what I did and I put out Life Experience at the end of last year and I'm really just pleased with the response.
BallerStatus.com: You recently released "Windows Over Harlem" and the video. You've earned your Master's from Columbia in African-American Studies, which translates well in your new single "Windows over Harlem," as you touch topics of gentrification, Harlem's history, and the closing of mom and pop stores. What made you shed light on these topics?
Amanda Diva: I lived in Harlem for a number of years now and it's always inspired me as an artist because especially from my studies there's so much literature based in Harlem that is in African-American literature. So I felt I was always walking through history. That inspired me as an artist and artists, often times, write about what inspires them. On the political side of touching gentrification, it was just important because I see that too. And I see how that affects the Harlem that inspires me. It's important that we shed light on that because this community is definitely a dying culture and it's up to the community itself to preserve what's here.
BallerStatus.com: The video highlights a certain era of Harlem, did you come up with the concept of the video?
Amanda Diva: Me and my director, Lyndon McCray, came up with all the concepts of the video. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do something classy. From jump we needed some type of jazz theme type of joint, so we can capture that old school essence of Harlem. St. Nick's [Pub] were very, very accommodating. We went in and we brought my folks and the band came to play and you see it's not acting. We had a show going on that day. I brought in some of my colleagues and peers: Lydia Caesar and Estelle, some dope musicians and folks really just handled B.I. all day. I went to college with [the dancers] and everybody was just committed to doing something really classy and creative and it really exceeded my expectations.
BallerStatus.com: How often do you push out videos on DivaSpeak & Myspace?
Amanda Diva: We do DivaSpeak every week. We are going to go on a little break during the summer because we like to pretend that we are on a network. (laughs) The season is over, but we try to do that as often as possible. And music videos come when it's time to do music videos. This will be the third video from Life Experience and it would more than likely be the last. I now started working on the Love Experience, so I hope to have a new video at least in July.
BallerStatus.com: What's next for Amanda Diva? What can we expect to hear from you next?
Amanda Diva: We just moved the blog to Okayplayer.com, so that's really exciting. Get your DivaSpeak for the week and get your Amanda Diva madness for the day. And we also started working on Love Experience, the next EP on the "Experience Trilogy," so we are really trying to dive in with that and get that off the ground and get that right for folks. It's a process. Gosh darnet, it is a process, but I rather be doing that than filing papers. So that's a process that I live with.
Can I say one more thing?
BallerStatus.com: Sure.
Amanda Diva: I just want people to really support independent artists because just like "Windows Over Harlem," we talk about saving the community, we have to save our music. The only way to do so is to be in charge of our own creativity and that's what independent artists are doing. We are taking charge. Buy Life Experience on iTunes, go on MySpace and support independent music.
BallerStatus.com: What about your art? Are you still selling that?
Amanda Diva: Yeah, that's all available on my Myspace. You can buy art, books, CDs, bags, its all about the merchandise baby. Myspace.com/AmandaDiva.
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