FlyIsForever

Please alert any Black folk you know in this line of work. 

So I found out about this store (ran by an older white woman, which is important because I’m a young Black woman, and young Black entrepreneurs are always especially stolen from) because she accidentally followed my personal assistants Instagram. 

They’re blatantly copying my stuff (mine on the left Foxie Cosmetics, theirs copies on the right Shine Happy Life) and it doesn’t even stop with what’s shown here. They copy everything from trying to match up ingredients, descriptions and the actual name of the products. I’ve had this stuff from the beginning and theirs are new. It’s clear that she sits on my site copying my things from my store and others. 

DO NOT SUPPORT THEFT. It’s one thing to be inspired and create something new, but it’s another to straight up copy, and with no shame ESPECIALLY as a small business. Especially as a white woman stealing from, and trying to ride the success of a Black woman. I make everything and do everything myself and I work hard on these vegan recipes and the research, and don’t appreciate her copying at all. 

No matter how much I test the elastic limit of my disconnection from religion, I will always have a very soft spot for Black folk singing gospel music. And Coloring Book feeds that spot, but in a way that it hasn’t been before.

I’ve been thinking about Kanye’s Jesus Walks a lot since listening to this album, trying to decide why this feels different. Jesus Walks tapped into our historical connection with Christianity to power it. It was rap blended with gospel. It used gospel to validate rap.

Coloring Book almost admits that there is a stark juxtaposition between rap and gospel, but then encourages the notion that the two genres are born of the same tar pit of pain, the same weary voice, and beg the exact same salvation.