Feelin' the Heat

I don’t know about where you live, but things have been H-O-T hot in my backyard lately. Yeah, it’s July, but this has been clothes-soaked-in-sweat-just-sitting-in-the-shade heat, not your average summertime warm up. According to an article I saw on CNN, if you’re reading this, you just lived through the hottest June ever recorded. Congratulations…? That’s kind of terrifying to me, but hey, any excuse to celebrate, I guess.

In honor of our having made it through the heat I thought it would be appropriate to chronicle some of the hottest records and/or recording artists I’ve come across over the years. I don’t just mean aesthetics, either. I’m talking about music that’ll sex the pants right off ya. I don’t have a set number in mind, so we’ll see where this list takes us.

First up: Brenda Boykin


Information on Ms. Boykin is surprisingly scant, so I can’t tell you much about her history or personal life. There’s a nice little bio here, but that’s about all I could find (I could never get the Myspace page to load). That’s okay though. Mystery is sexy, right? What I can tell you is that her first solo album, Chocolate & Chili, is quite possibly the sexiest record I’ve ever heard, and I don’t say that lightly. The music on the album is a mix of nu-jazz, swing, blues, and electronics, but it doesn’t fall prey to the trap of becoming scattered. There’s a definite mood to this album and each of those genres serves to enhance it. One of the first things that jumped out at me is how bass heavy the music is. If you’re one of those people that crank the bass you might want to dial it back a bit before putting this album on, lest you risk your speakers. It’s heavy. The second thing that jumped out at me was Ms. Boykin’s amazingly sultry voice. She’s one of the few vocalists that can manage soft, rough, sexy and mournful all at the same time. Listening to tracks like Talk With Your Hands, Chocolate and Chili, or Moaning, it’s hard to decide what to do. Cry? Drink? Hook up with a stranger? A mix of the three? Any of those choices would be a good fit.


Though facts are few, I discovered that Ms. Boykin has done a lot of vocal work for other bands. One of them was Home Cookin’, who released a fantastic pair of blues albums, one in the mid 90s and one in 2000. I only have their second, Afrobilly Soul Stew, but after listening to it I am very eager to get the first. It’s a testament to Ms. Boykin’s skill that her voice sounds equally at home with a traditional blues backing as it does with an electronic jazz outfit behind it. The blues don’t take away from the sexiness either. Just listen to Chains or her cover of Crying Time and you’ll see that feeling so bad never felt so good. I’m going to come right out and say it: Brenda Boykin is a strong contender for the Etta James throne. If that means anything to you, then you need to get this album.

It borders on criminal that Brenda Boykin doesn’t receive the attention her talent deserves. Chocolate & Chili is available on iTunes (look it up on Amazon and you’ll see that the iTunes price is a steal) as is Home Cookin’s Afrobilly Soul Stew. You can also find her work with Club des Belugas there. If you’ve got eight or nine bucks to spare you really can’t go wrong here. What else are you going to spend that money on? Food? It’s too hot out to eat anyway. Utilities? Lights just make things hotter. Do yourself a favor and go for one (or both) of these albums instead. And if anyone has recommendations for their own sexy music lists feel free to leave them in the comments!

Here you go:



I couldn't find any Home Cookin' samples, so here's something else from her solo album (and no, that's not her in the picture):

Discussion Time

It’s not often that I find myself in the position of not knowing what to make of a situation, but this has certainly done it. Wow. I’ve literally spent the past hour arguing with myself, but since I haven’t made any headway I’m bringing the argument to you so we can talk it out. What do you think? There’s a part of me that says, yes, this was totally and completely unethical, but I’m not convinced that means it was the wrong thing to do.

The folks at Stinky Journalism have a point about the need for privacy in 12 step groups in order for them to be effective. Yes, AA and NA and all the other __A’s out there have helped countless numbers of people, but I’m not sold that just because you model yourself after AA that you’re a legit, helpful program deserving of respectful anonymity. If there was a 12 step program out there for combating non-racist thoughts would that make it okay? Or if there was a 12 step program for helping you to beat your spouse? You can read the 12 steps here, though all they did was repeat AA’s 12 steps pretty much verbatim but replaced “alcohol” with “homosexual.” A much more interesting (and nauseating) read is the FAQ.

Did you read that? Are you fucking kidding me? There’s so much bullshit on that page I’m surprised you couldn’t smell it through your monitor. Pardon the coarse language, but that was a lot to swallow. Dropping the word “philosophical” and “psychological” over and over again doesn’t cover up the fact that the purpose of your group is for people to feel bad about themselves because of how they were born. And while we’re talking about their take on psychology, I haven’t found any information on the group facilitator’s credentials. Unless he’s got a Ph.D., or LPCC after his name he has no business helping anyone with anything remotely related to mental health, ESPECIALLY not kids, as was ominously mentioned under the first question.

Getting back to the issue…were these meetings supposedly confidential? Yes, but here’s my take on that. If you spend all day preaching hate about a group of people to which you actually belong, you don’t deserve confidentiality or respect. Where’s your respect for the people you’re harming with your hateful rhetoric? I’m not going to go into the politics of self-loathing, but this is one instance where LGBT gets separated out from other minorities. Unless you’re this guy -



(That's Uncle Ruckus from the Boondocks for those unfamiliar)

-I doubt there are many African American people who would attend a 12-step program designed to help them fight their African American-ness. Which just makes the topic stickier. It says in the Stinky Journalism piece that Mr. Brock was going there “to be held accountable,” but again, I have to disagree. So you spend all day preaching hateful things about the LGBT community, of which you are a member, but then cap your week by going to a support group that says “well, you’re okay as long as you don’t act on it.” It seems to me like that’s more of a pass than an attempt at being held accountable.

Which brings up another issue I had with the Stinky Journalism piece. They point out that:

Also important to note is that Lavender didn't prove that Brock never said he was gay – just that he “fell into temptation.”

Here’s the thing. If you read the Lavender piece, Mr. Brock mentions that by “falling into temptation” he meant he was out bangin’ Slovakian dudes on a church trip. As far as I’m concerned that’s gay enough to get you an invite to the big LGBT block party. No, they didn't catch him claiming to be straight, but he's not exactly qualifying his hateful public statements with "by the way, I'm gay but I'm totally not okay with it, so it's cool."

I guess what I keep coming back to is that if you’re a public figure, who publicly puts yourself out there as a hatemonger, you don’t get to hide behind some half-assed 12 Step program’s supposed confidentiality when you get caught as a hypocrite. Do I think what Lavender did was unethical? Technically, yes. Does that make it the wrong thing to do in this instance? Not in my book. It’s a cliché, but I’m a believer in that sometimes you’ve gotta do bad to do good.

It sounds like I’ve finally made up my mind, but I’d be very interested in hearing what other people think about this, so feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section.