Meet Yo Majesty:

An all female rap group from Florida who’ve been at it for seven years, trying to carve a better path for women in rap and the music industry in general. Known for attracting hard core lesbian audiences and dancing topless, Yo Majesty can, at first, seem to bring novelty to the game, if nothing else.  I saw them Saturday night at Slim’s in San Francisco; novelty was absolutely blown out of the water.

 

The band opening for them was UK-based electro-rock band Does It Offend You, Yeah?, who were also at Coachella last week, whose defining moment came at the end, in a sort of last minute energy-saving finale, the lead singer pointed to a sign which read “No moshing, no stage diving…etc” and yelled “See that sign? Fuck that sign!” and got a bunch of jumping moshing fanatics to come up on stage and, potentially (as I saw it), be kicked out and not get to stay for Yo Majesty.  So by the end of that I was definitely ready to have my night be picked back up. I didn’t know what I was in for.

 

I went down to the basement coat check to put mine away in preparation for Yo Majesty. The “Be Back Soon” sign on the door didn’t bother Dyl (who was along for the ride) and I nearly as much as it did the girl who appeared after us, obviously drunk, looking for her coat.

 

“I wish I had a fucking axe so I could break down that door – How the hell am I supposed to get my coat? God DAMNIT!”

She was having a little bit of an episode.  We tried to assure her they’d be back any minute, all of us commenting about the necessity of some sort of clock decal that indicates how long it would be till their return. Suddenly, down the hallway directly in front of me, the emergency exit door busts open. Yo Majesty herself, Jwl B, is barreling down the hallway wearing a sweatshirt with the hood over her half her face and ban sunglasses. She is at once masculine and feminine, carrying a strange air of purpose and divinity. I pull on Dyl’s arm, not even sure what to say to alert him of her presence, when she’s appeared right in our little circle, charging right into Dyl’s high five and shaking my hand. She turns to the drunk girl, who is still whimpering about her coat and nearly whispers into her face,

 

“You at a Yo Majesty show.”

 

The girl continues. Jwl B. grabs her shoulders and says in a light, sweet but serious tone,

“You at. A Yo Majesty show.” The girl is bewildered. “Who? What are you talking about?”

“Yo Majesty,” Dyl and I chime in. “You’re lookin’ at her right now, man,” I clarify.

The girl isn’t having it. She starts in about the coat. Jwl B. is still holding her by the shoulders and is speaking slowly, sweetly. Almost hypnotically. She takes off her sunglasses and gets eye to eye with the girl.

 

“You want your coat. It’s gonna come back to you. You want somethin’ bad enough someone gonna bring it to you. You gonna be alright.”

 

The girl shuts up for a second, and seems to calm down. Jwl B. gives Dyl and I one more round of high fives and charges back down the hallway, out the emergency exit.

“Holy Shit,” escapes from all of us.

The girl shakes out of it and turns to us “And out the emergency exit! Okay. Obviously that woman is bless-ed… but I still want my damn coat.”

We didn’t know how it happened but we had all just experienced this sort of surreal moment, and then we heard them being announced on stage upstairs. We checked our coats (they were back) and ran upstairs. What proceeded was one of the best shows I’ve been to in a long time.  

They kicked off the show with “Never Be Afraid,” an overlooked anthem for what they’re trying to do.  Get over the hump, do what they feel, have a good time doing it, not give in to what people want them to.  It was a great example of what a hip hop show can be: serious, funny, righteous, sensational.  Female break dancers (Austin’s The Born Ready Rockers), great flow, danceable, funky beats that had everybody moving. To top the show, a guy repping an Oakland org called Silence The Violence came on stage and had a word about the peaking violence happening right now in the city. Silence The Violence’s working motto is decreasing violence by increasing opportunity. I’m sure I’ll be back on here soon talking about them, but check them out!

We talked to Jwl B. again after the show, about what they’re doing out here, the album coming out in August, women in the industry.  She was in a much different place than before the show, certainly.  Both women are smart, strong, and doing it all themselves.  They’ll tell you straight up that they are out here hustlin’, selling homemade shirts and playing almost nightly on their tour.  Strong women have been long neglected in rap, and they are making a fair stand against it.  

 

Check them out on MySpace, and make sure you check them out live if you’re lucky enough to live in one of their tour destinations through the end of the month (more coming soon!). Seriously.