SOUNDTRACK: MICHIE MEE & L.A. LUV-“Jamaican Funk, Canadian Style” (1991).
I only know about Michie Mee because she has written pieces for the West End Phoenix. I knew she was a rapper, but I had no idea she has been rapping since the 1980s!
I watched this profile about her and found out her first album came out in 1991. The video for the title track “Jamaican Funk, Canadian Style” is so perfectly 1991–the backgrounds, the dance moves, the little kids, the kinda story. It’s a perfect time capsule.
I like that Michie raps part of the song in her Jamaican patois and the rest of the song sounds pretty straight up feminist (she found it tough to break into the biz being A) Canadian B) female and C) very young. I’m not sure what was the biggest impediment. But she was the first Canadian rapper to get a U.S. record deal.
So good on her. And she’s still going strong.
[READ: July 1, 2019] “That Summer, This City”
The Summer 2019 issue of The West End Phoenix was a special all comics issue with illustrations by Simone Heath. Each story either has one central illustration or is broken up with many pictures (or even done like a comic strip).
Each story is headed by the year that the story takes place–a story from that particular summer.
Michie is a rapper who has written pieces in a number of the WEP issues. This is a story about her 2007 summer (and if you read the blurb above, you’ll see she has been rapping for over fifteen years by then). (more…)
I Just Read About That... 