On 'Heaux Tales' + Other Musings on Love
What I felt from listening to Jazmine Sullivan's latest project as someone in her early twenties
Graphic: Alanna Evans
Bitch, get it together, bitch. You don’t know who you went home, who you went home with again. That’s the opening line of “Bodies,” the first track of Jazmine Sullivan’s critically-acclaimed EP Heaux Tales. The single poses as this soulful sermon that Sullivan directs to herself. I’d also like to think of the song as a personalized message for DeAsia because, in that moment, it felt like she was talking directly to me. I think she was.
I’ve listened to that line probably more than 10 times since the project came out last month. I’ve even re-winded the song in the middle of the track just to listen to that line again. It resonated deeply with me because I remember the one-too-many times I’ve said some version of that sentence to myself. That line took me back to my junior year of college. I had just got out of a “relationship” with someone who I was only with because the idea of having someone who liked me seemed nice and not because I was genuinely attracted to that person. So, after I ended it, I felt like it was free. I felt liberated. And I felt like being in that relationship was emotionally and sexually suffocating simply because I wanted to get out of it.
That’s when I started exploring my sexuality with different men in ways that I couldn’t before. I didn’t really have any intention behind it. I just wanted to feel good. As Sullivan sings on “Bodies,” I kept on “piling on bodies on bodies on bodies.” However, not long into this discovery of my sexuality did I begin to realize that some cishet men can’t handle a woman having any level of sexual agency.
Pick Up Your Feelings
From my experience, men like to place women in these boxes that they’ve created for them. If women appear to be modest and “wholesome”, then men view them as pure and worthy of respect, but if women share thirst traps of themselves on social media or are vocal about their sexuality, then men perceive them as a “ho” or begging for attention. There is no gray area. Women aren’t allowed to be both because anything outside of those pre-determined boxes would mean that men have less control. And that just simply wouldn’t work in a patriarchal society, right?
It explains why my sexual partners had a different perception of me after the sex. The respect that was present before the sex was gone immediately after because their perception of me as a sex object didn’t warrant any respect of me. Society is confronted with this phenomenon in pop culture on a regular basis. When Chloe Bailey, 1/2 of the popular R&B duo Chloe x Hailey, started sharing sensual pictures and videos on Instagram, she was met with criticism from those who felt she should cover up her body. Additionally, when Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion teamed on their mega hit "WAP” over the summer, they received backlash from male artists like Snoop Dogg and CeeLo Green who felt that they were sharing too much and suggested that they leave the discussion of their genital parts to a man’s imagination. It should be noted that Snoop Dogg has songs like “Drop It Like It’s Hot” and “Sexual Eruption” in which he comments on a woman’s sexuality, but I guess those songs get a pass because it’s a man talking about it.
That’s why nodded my head to every line in “Antoinette’s Tale,” on Heaux Tales, which effectively addresses the issue of men always wanting to be in control:
The thing is, niggas cannot handle if a woman takes the same liberties as them, especially in regards to sex. Our society teaches them to be so wrapped up in themselves and their own conquest that they forget we’re sexual beings as well. Plus, their egos are often way too fragile to ever handle a woman who owns or has any real agency over her body.
“Pick Up Your Feelings” being the track to follow that interlude is *chef’s kiss*. Throughout the song, Sullivan sings about not wanting to be the container for a man’s feelings after mustering the courage to leave an unhealthy relationship. Listening to the song’s lyrics and the interlude before it made me think: Is it worth women being in a romantic relationship with a cishet man? What do women benefit from it?
The Other Side
If men have to be taught how to treat women with respect and unlearn all of the ways in which partriachy has influenced their behavior toward women, doesn’t that automatically create an unfair predicament for women? As a cishet woman, is it a futile attempt for me to seek some sort of relationship with a man? Am I setting myself up for failure?
Those are some of the questions I constantly ask myself on a regular basis. Leading up to Valentine’s Day and the week after it, I found myself thinking about those things even more as I saw plenty of videos of pictures of couples expressing their love for their partners. Even though I told myself I was going to delete Instagram off my phone for Valentine’s Day weekend, I didn’t. I looked at pictures of Lori Harvey and Michael B. Jordan, Saweetie and Quavo, Russell Wilson and Ciara and other celebrity couples that I embarrassingly stalk on Instagram.
I also saw more pictures of couples on my Twitter timeline, and my immediate thought was, “Why can’t I have that?” Then I started asking myself those aforementioned questions, which led me to the conclusion that having those public displays of affection from a man isn’t exactly possible for me because I think that there’s some sort of compromise or sacrifice that women must take in order to be thoroughly content in a relationship with a man.
At least that’s what I’ve learned in my experiences with men. Even though I’m only 22 and having this negative outlook on love may be a little pre-mature, I’ve never dealt with a man who didn’t understand patriarchy and how he benefits from it. And, to me, that’s telling. I don’t think most men truly understand patriarchy, which is why I’d rather be single than give a man a crash course in Feminism 101. It’s also why I resonate with “Other Side,” one of the last tracks on Heaux Tales. On the single, Sullivan yearns to have a life in which all her needs are taken care of by rich man: “Imma move to Atlanta/Imma find me a rapper/He gon buy me a booty/Let me star in the movie.”
Sometimes, I want the same thing. I often wonder if being in a relationship with a man solely for reaping his financial benefits is the right course to follow, considering the notion that anything outside of that transactional relationship can be a losing game for women. Sometimes, I want to live on the other side.
Having all of those thoughts based one music project is the beauty of Heaux Tales to me. The EP is highly relatable and channels all of the nuanced feelings women have in romantic and casual relationships. It gives us a perfect blend of the blissful moments (“Put It Down,” “On It”) and the bitch-what-the-fuck-am-I-doing moments (“Bodies,” “Girls Like Me”). The project captures those group chat conversations with my friends and my inner desires, along with Sullivan giving us a vocal clinic on almost all of the tracks. Heaux Tales is the strongest, well-crafted R&B project I’ve heard since Lucky Daye’s Painted (2019), and it sets the tone for future R&B albums coming out this year. More importantly, however, Heaux Tales is a promising comeback for Sullivan, who makes listeners forget about her six year hiatus from music, but instead makes them eager for what’s to come from the powerhouse songstress.
What I’m Listening to
K by Kelly Rowland: In her first project since 2013, Kelly Rowland returns with K, an EP that’s mainly notable for Rowland’s solid vocals throughout.
Black Girl Songbook: Hosted by music journalist Danyel Smith, Black Girl Songbook is a podcast that celebrates Black women in music as Smith recalls how those artists impacted her personal life.
That’s all she wrote!
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Talk soon,
DeAsia