The Listening: "Do You Remember"

In my first semester at NYU, I took a course taught by Robin Kelley on the African Diaspora. There was an assignment, a written response, a journal entry or maybe an annotated bibliography, that I was to complete on the subject broadly and I invoked this here song. It took the form of a question as if no one else could recognize the tentacles extending from Scott's music to negritude broadly. Kelley noted in the margins on my paper that he heard where she was coming from as well and it learned me how easily one's "aha" can be another's "oh yeah."

"Do You Remember" gives voice, multi-octave assured and playful Black woman voice, to a shared past and taut, sometimes tenuous partnerships. Common put it this way, "It's the Black upon each other that we love so much."

"Do You Remember" [MP3]
Jill Scott

"...Black music is Black music and it's all good." - Common