{"id":494,"date":"2019-12-16T12:54:24","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T17:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/?page_id=494"},"modified":"2019-12-17T20:07:33","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T01:07:33","slug":"reality-check","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/reality-check\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Reality Check&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: center\"><\/h2>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/page-3-taylor-brenda-emily\/\">\u201cShe dream in techni-color<\/a><br \/>\nLive black and white<br \/>\nOpportunity knockin&#8217;<br \/>\nA nigga just got her nails done<br \/>\nSkeletons in my closet gone open the door when Yale come<br \/>\nThey ain&#8217;t gonna wanna see my silhouette rap<br \/>\nHe&#8217;s fucking cognac<br \/>\nMy smile in all black\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right\">Noname<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Spotify Embed: Reality Check (feat. Akenya &amp; Eryn Allen Kane)\" width=\"300\" height=\"380\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"encrypted-media\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/0UVfZ1QfaSPqRHhmZNVI71?si=Gch8_I08RPat3pbq_4Djyg\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\">Background:<\/h2>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;text-align: center\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Fatimah Warner, also known as Noname, grew up in Bronzeville, Chicago with her grandparents until her first year of high school. \u00a0Up until this point her mother had been mostly absent throughout her life, an adjacent, rather than central, force in her childhood. Thus by the time she rejoined her mother, their relationship was fractured. Regardless, The public doesn\u2019t know the names of her mother, brother, or grandparents. Warner is thus very private, which makes telefone, a very personal and vulnerable album, all the more notable.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;text-align: center\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 By high school, Warner joined a writing program at her local library. Through it, she developed the creative and poetic writing skills that would carry her lyrics into today. This is also where her interest in slam poetry and rap began. As she grew,Warner partook in many contests for both, and in the process, met other Chicago artists like Chance the Rapper and Saba. With them, she self-produced and promoted her first album Telefone in 2016. Since then it has been praised by critics like Rollingstone and Stereogum for its poignance and thought provoking nature.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\">Noname: The Impact of a Name<\/h2>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;text-align: center\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Originally named<i> \u201cNoname Gypsy,\u201d<\/i> Warner changed it due to racial controversy. However, before she was aware of the racial implications, she liked the name because it reminded her of a drifting or nomadic lifestyle. However, even with the name change Warner keeps to the original spirit of her idea by continuously challenging the paradigm of linear success. The idea that the road to success is a clear straight line. Instead she proposes that success comes with periods of complacency and stagnancy. That you can have set backs and insecurity, but so long as you keep your goal in mind you\u2019re still on the right path. Her stage name forces her to both acknowledge and move past those insecurities and be open to a future in which she alone can define her narrative.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;text-align: center\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Throughout <i>Reality Check, \u00a0<\/i>Warner is telling a narrative of black femme pain in Chicago, like the flip side to Chance or Saba, her contemporaries. To do this, she explores both her own personal narrative as well as the narratives of those who came before her and gave her the opportunity to write today. However, for every story she tells, she questions herself, wondering whether she is the most qualified or the \u201cright\u201d person to give life to these stories. \u00a0She describes herself as a \u201cMississippi vagabond\u201d whose \u201cgranny gone turn up in her grave\/ saying my granny really was a slave for this?\/ all your incomplete smilies and pages ripped\/ you know they whipped us \/ how you afraid to rap it?\u201d This is her perception of herself, not her grandmothers. \u00a0Warner knows this, yet she still feels the weight and frustration of not representing her ancestors&#8217; stories \u201cfully\u201d. \u00a0She also feels like her frustration isn\u2019t valid because she is in \u201cheaven\u201d in comparison to her ancestors.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;text-align: center\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Running parallel to lines about insecurity is a chorus saying \u201cdon&#8217;t fear the light that dwells deep within\/ you are powerful beyond what you imagine\/ just let your light glow\u201d That chorus is her grandmother that supported her, her ancestors waiting for their stories to be told.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;text-align: center\">Telefone is vulnerable because Warner isn\u2019t hiding or shaming her insecurity about the future. She doesn\u2019t know whether she\u2019s qualified, she doesn\u2019t know that she will succeed. However, she is unwilling to pass up the opportunities given to her. In &#8220;Reality Check,&#8221; she is saying that you can&#8217;t trap yourself in a box just because it&#8217;s comfortable; you have to take that scary leap of faith in order to reach your dreams.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: right\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/page-5-taylor-brenda-emily\/\">\u201cAnd when that call comes<\/a><br \/>\n(You better say hello)&#8230;.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cShe dream in techni-color Live black and white Opportunity knockin&#8217; A nigga just got her nails done Skeletons in my closet gone open the door when Yale come They ain&#8217;t gonna wanna see my silhouette rap He&#8217;s fucking cognac My smile in all black\u201d Noname Background: \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Fatimah Warner, also known as Noname, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3428,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-494","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3428"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1963,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/494\/revisions\/1963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/afr111-f19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}