The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
In celebration of Black Music Month, this week I’m joined by Danyel Smith, the former editor-in-chief of Vibe Magazine, R&B Editor at Billboard, award-winning journalist, and host of the mega-hit podcast, Black Girl Songbook. Danyel is also the author of the new and highly celebrated book Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women and Pop. The book is a literary mashup, part biography, part memoir, all while weaving in the history of Black women’s contributions to the genre of American pop music. During our conversation we explored the music that has meant the most to Danyel in her lifetime and chatted about how she prioritized her mental health while writing the book.
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Executive Producers: Dennison Bradford & Maya Cole Howard
Producers: Fredia Lucas, Ellice Ellis & Cindy Okereke
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr Joy hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for session two sixty one of the Therapy for Black Girl's podcast. We'll get right into our conversation after a word from our sponsors. In celebration of Black Music Month this week, I'm joined by Danielle Smith, the former editor in chief of Vibe magazine, R and B editor at Billboard, Award winning journalist and host of the mega hit podcast Black Girls Songbook. Danielle is also the author of the new and highly celebrated book Shine Bright, a very personal history of Black women in pop The book is a literary mash up part biography, part memoir, all while weaving in the history of black women's contributions to the genre of American pop music. During our conversation, we explored the music that has meant the most to Danielle in her lifetime, and chatted about how she prioritized her mental health while writing the book. And a quick note about the episode. Danielle and I recorded this conversation the week after our brothers and sisters were killed in the Buffalo grocery store, and so we did get into that a little bit at around the fifteen minute mark. So I just wanted to give you a heads up to make sure that you take care of yourself while listening. If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please share with us on social media using the hashtag tv G in session or join us over in the Sister Circle. So let's talk more in depth about the episode. You can join us at community that Therapy for Black Girls dot com. Here's our conversation. I am so excited to tchere with you, Danielle. Thank you so much for making time for us today. Oh my goodness, I'm honored to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yes so let's get started by talking about when did you decide that it was time to write a book about black women in pop music. I think it's been in me since the beginning of my career, to be honest with you, I think I've been thinking about it in one way or another throughout the duration of my career, especially as I began to because I started my career doing live reviews and things like that, like going to concerts. One of my first assignments was going to see Natalie Cole in concert and writing a live review. It was one of the more exciting moments of my life and exceeded the deal for me that I wanted to do what I'm doing right now as a career. But then once I started actually meeting women, meeting black women who make R and B and pop music and speaking to them about their stories, I always knew that at some point I was gonna have to get it all down. Yeah, it feels like there were so many different directions you could have gone, right, I mean, you could have done individual books on like individual people like It feels like there were lots of different rules you could have taken. How did you kind of finally decide probably with the help of your editor, like how to narrow the book. We were able to narrow down. I mean we had to narrow it down, honestly, because I just wasn't getting finished. That was the first thing. It was almost logistical. And Chris Jackson, who was my editor at One World, he was like, I think I may have an idea of why you're not finishing. And I was like, well, I was up for anything. I was like, well, what is it if you have and if you have an idea, and he said, because if you're just trying to write like an encyclopedic book of profiles about black women in pop music, there is no finishing. Like you could keep writing for your whole life. A hundred other women or people could keep writing their whole life, and we still would not be done. He said, But if we talk about this being a personal history, then already we have some parameters, we have a spine. So what I began to do was make choices based on the music that has meant the most to me and my sister over the course of my life and my career. Then music that has meant the most to my mother and her sister and the women and the music who meant the most to my late grandmother and her sister. So then we began to have a story to tell. Yeah, there was such a beautiful weaving of like your personal story with the stories of the artists that you have decided to cover. So I thought that was a very unique piece of the book. So you start the book with American author and poet Phillis Swheetley. Why did you feel like it was important to start with her story? Well, one, because I do believe that Phillis sweet Lee is a foundation for black women in pop She's our first global superstar. A fact about Philip Sweetly, aside from her being like the first published black poet, wasn't even the United States of America when she started writing. It was barely the thirteen Colonies at that time. But once she began to be popular in Massachusetts, she ended up going back across the Atlantic after having been kidnapped and brought over here and sold as a slave to the Weekly family. She actually went back across the Atlantic, which I don't know if it was freeing for her or if it was more traumatic, but she went over there and she performed her poems, She spoke her poems and she sang her poems for the literary salons of that time. And I was always very much in love with even the idea of Philis Sweetly, even before I knew that, just because as a little girl, like I don't know, fourth, fifth, sixth grade, there was a reading area in one of the classrooms I was in, and every month the decorations would change, and then one month it was Philis Sweetly, And I always remember they were like they tried to make Slavery nice, like they tried to make the Middle Passage nice, and God bless Mrs Black, because that's who it was. But there were like stars up in the sky, dark sky, so you could just imagine, I think, a little girl on the Middle Passage looking up at the stars, which I'm sure did not happen, but for me as a little girl, it made me fall in love with her as a human, you know, and not just the poet. And how did the title shine Bright come about? What does that mean to you? Well, I say, and in shine Bright that I look upon it as a mission statement and also a command. I look upon it as a command I do. I'm not one that likes to go around commanding stuff on folks, even though it's fun, but that's not how we're supposed to act. And this is therapy for black girls. So I know that we're not supposed to be doing all that kind of commanding. But I am going to make an exception and say, I just command black women to shine bright, shine bright, and it's not just coming for me. One of the songs that so many black girls learn as little girls, we girls like four or five six year old girls. If you're in acquir or you go to day camp or anything, you learn that song, this Little Lot of Mine, I'm going to let it shine. We all know that song, every little where I go, I'm gonna let it shine. All the great ones have sung that, all the great black women vocalists have sung that song. And I can trace the line from that song to Rihanna Fincy sang shine Bright like a Diamond. And I look at that as the frame, and I think that we forget the gale and the confidence that we felt as little girls singing this Little Light of mine. I'm gonna you know, we probably had on our eastern dress or our little choir roabe, or we were in a row with all our little friends at school or at church. And we felt so good nine times out of ten, and I want us to reclaim some of that energy. So that's where the title came from. For me. Absolutely, I appreciate each thing that you know you've also written about, like your experiences with self doubt and like really acclaiming your complishments. I mean, there are so many, you know, but I think that's really interesting kind of given your command of like shine right, and so you know, we all have had our own personal experiences with that, and so I'd love for you to share, if you feel comfortable, like your experiences with that and how you've been able to move past that, especially I think with the book, because I feel like the book put you on this stage that is very different than maybe you know, other very cool things that you've done throughout your career. I mean, neither my life nor my career has been any kind of like straight line. I think it's lengths in Houston's at life for being ain't been on Crystal Stair. And I don't think I'm special as a black woman for that to be true. I don't, I think for so many of us, because he was writing about his mother and so for so many of us, like for us has not nor does it continue to be a crystal stair and as I lined, has gone into really in detail and shine bright. At a very tumultuous childhood, it was violent physically, it was violent spiritually, and I had to make a decision very early on in my life that I was going to become an adult that probably around the age of fourteen, I think, and that I was going to have to make a lot of the decisions for myself that others might have made for me. So while I think that made me a very strong little girl, it also infused me with a lot of intense and constant self doubt and second guessing always even to this moment. I mean, it gets better every year. Every year I get a little bit more free. But it's been difficult. I think it's also been not easy. But when you can stand up and say Hello, I'm Daniel Smith, I'm the R and B editor at Billboard. Hello, I'm Daniel Smith. I'm the editor of Billboard. Hello, I'm Daniel Smith. I'm the new intern at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. I'm the I am Daniel I'm the editor in chief of Vibe. And this is actually the second time that I've been asked to be the editor in chief of Vibe. The thing is you always have that brand attached. You always have that I'm with ESPN, I'm Daniel Smith, and I'm not saying it makes it easy, but it makes it easier. The thing about this part of my life with Shine Bright is that I'm here on behalf of myself. I'm Daniel Smith of Daniel Smith. Like I'm telling the stories that I want to tell about the black women that I'm choosing, and I'm telling my story as it relates to them, and I've worked very hard for as you mentioned, for that, we've to be as seamless as possible. I don't think there's any spoilers to be given away at the end of Shine Bright, but I do think that I was not feeling this good about myself before I wrote I'm right. I definitely am feeling better now, even though in some spaces it was awful to write down these most personal things. It's awful, a lot of tears, a lot of tears, but then you wake up and it's in the world and you are reminded that you are not alone. Yeah, it's so interesting to hear you say because of course I know your resume, like so many of us knew your resume, but I don't feel like you need any other brand attached to your name, like you are Daniel Smith, right. But I think it is the disconnect between like how we often see ourselves and how the rest of the world sees us. It's often not congruent, absolutely, and it's just interesting for me even to talk about it. I think so many things. I have a very tight relationship with my husband, and my husband who would literally it'll be seventeen years next month, so I mean, I think I thought he knew all that there was to know about me, and vice versa. And we have a thing that we do when he's writing well when I'm writing well, where we will read the other person's work allowed to them so you can hear it in a quote unqole like Stranger's voice without your intonation. That's a really a good editing trick. And Eliott would be reading and he would get emotional and he would say because I met him when we were both working journalists, and he would say, I just always thought you were so completely and in every way confident in every move that you made. And I said I got you, didn't I I said I got everybody Because so much of our lives are performance, and I'm not saying that it was complete performance. But you know, you wake up in the morning and you say, or at least I did. I am this person. I know I am good at this. I know I am gonna do good work today, and that is how I'm going to move through this day. But you know that might be a Monday. On Tuesday, you might wake up like everything that I do was a mistake. I don't make good decisions. I don't know if I can trust my own creativity. I think people at the job don't trust my expertise. Also, I just don't think I look cute in this outfit, and you still have to go up there and act as if none of that is true. And I'm very, very good at that. And it's kind of more relaxed now that I can even say that allowed to folks. Mm hmm, I mean, but I think that's truth for us. So many of us as black women, right like, we gotta put on the face, we gotta put on the uniform, right like, and go in the office and take care of business as if the world is not falling apart outside. Yes, yes, it's not just. It's not just either, like you could say that my jobs have been somewhat glamorous, right. I have a niece who work the front lines that she took time off school during the pandemic working at Target. She's a real genius of a girl, and she had to put on that armor to go up there. My sister, her mother, teaches part of second third right, and she loves it, and she has to put on her armor to go up there even and she loves being a teacher. But it's hard sometimes just to be us. And it feels like incredibly impactful having this conversation in the moment we're having it, right, So we're kind of fresh office massacre in Buffalo, and so it feels like that like point hits home, you know, to kind of just beat us in the world. Grocery shopping is not even safe. And here's the thing. I remember when I first started getting like a paycheck that allowed me to be in the grocery store and just to get the stuff that I actually wanted and not necessarily the stuff that I felt that I needed and that I had to have my coupons together and I needed to make sure that it was going to stretch from this day of this week or whatever. But I could really just go into the grocery store and just say, you know what, I usually get ground beef. I'm gonna get ground land. I just want to make me some lamburgers. Or I usually get these napkins that are on sale, but these napkins are particular, literally pretty. They're only forty five It's more than the napkins that I usually get, and I'm gonna get those. And I just literally feel that for a lot of people that don't come for money grocery shopping, it's a moment where it could be so filled with stress and worry. You know, I picture these women that I see their photos that were killed. You know, they look like my grandmother before she passed, and and I know for my grandmother, she enjoyed it. I'm gonna make some eggnog. Let's run down to the store. And so that's what these people were on. These women mostly, it seems like women were on just down there getting some food, probably to make for other folks. Man, you know, today is a heartbreaking day. Yeah, yeah, agreed. The grocery store, Yeah, you know, that way so many black women. It's kind of a joke where it's like love target just like to walk the aisles and look at things and maybe it's an hour and a half half away from the responsibilities of home or work, a moment where you can have your little Starbucks and you can walk through and say, oh, I didn't know that those pajamas came and pink, I think, let me just touch those or maybe by those I don't know if they're sacred spaces, but they are spaces where when it isn't rushed, and when everything isn't about stretching every penny as far as it can go, it can be such a space of like I'm in here by myself, sucking breathe, and then that right, it's a tough day. Yeah. More from my conversation with Danielle after the break. So you talked earlier about feeling like you came out of the book writing process in the different place than a better place and you went into it. What was it about the process of going through the book writing that allowed you to kind of come out on a different place. A couple of things. I'm very adamant about the stories that I tell about a readA Franklin's life, Jody Walley's life, Nancy Wilson's life, Mariah's life. I'm very adamant to not speak about these women in summary. I'm very adamant about speaking about the details of these women's lives, so I don't take on each woman from cradle to grave, as they say. I picked certain moments in certain years, or even certain songs, and just get very deep into that. And I wanted to give myself that same courtesy. I didn't want to speak about myself in summary. I didn't want to speak about my story talking around things. I wanted to give myself the respect of telling my stories in detail and just getting it out. I've talked about the incidents of my life with counselors over the years. I've written about the things that have happened to me as a child and as a teenager and in my twenties, and every creative writing class that I've ever taken. The people in my m f A program know me better than a lot of folks. But even in those spaces I was talking around things, it was talking about things in detail, doing reporting and researching on my own life, just giving myself that respect having a there's a fact checker that checked every fact in Shine Bright. They also check every fact about my life. He did. Sudrina Ford is a monster. And she would call me and say, you said that such and such a year was the year that you experienced your first eighty degree Christmas in Los Angeles And I said, yeah, girl, oh remember that I was riding my bike on Christmas Day. I didn't know anything about that in the Sunshine. She said, well, what year was it? And I said, well, I think it's seventy five, seventy six, So she went to the almanac to make sure. So that kind of attention. I have been paying to the stories of other women and people and artists since I started my career, so it was time for me to time that lens on myself. And I think it just makes me feel better. I feel like I've paid attention to myself. Yeah, that sounds both incredibly rewarding but also incredibly scary, Right like go through yourself and have other people right like go through the fine to details with that kind of accuracy feels like excruciating but also beautiful. It is, and I'm happy that I had such a partner in subrending because you know that's touching moments. Yeah, touching moments, I mean, And she had the car. Remember she had to speak to my aunt, my mother's sister about some things, and it was like, am I really about to give her my aunt's phone number? I'm really about, you know, And I'm very lucky that my aunt was like, what do you need to know? What do you need? Yes that I know that didn't. Yes that did know that didn't. And she got so into her story being told she was a beauty contest contestant in all black beauty pageants in Northern California when she was in her late teens and early twenties, and like that is the kind of thing that also just doesn't get talked about. It's so raggedy in some ways because you had to be a certain lightness of skin to be in these pageants. And then for the women who were light skin enough to be a part of it, though, they remember these pageants like the most beautiful moments of their lives. And I talked about both sides of it as I am here, and I was happy that my aunt was hoping to talking about it, like so we hadn't had that conversation. Not every story ends as beautifully as the one I just said about my aunt, and there's been tough moments too, but I just feel better that things are out there. Mm hmmm. So as I hear you talking about it, I mean, I definitely feel like you're bringing the material to life in a way that I feel like it's captured on the page, but not as eloquently I think is as you are, of course speaking to your person, And so as a psychologist, I'm thinking, how did you support yourself through giving birth to this book and bringing it into the world, Like, how were you taking care of your mental health and prioritizing your mental health in the process of writing Super Intentional. I'm not ashamed to say that I'm depressive and have been so since I was in my teens. I go in and out of depressive states almost my entire life, since I was like, yeah, nine or ten years old, and so in and out of counseling. I started going really as an adult intensely in my my mid thirties. It's always been a great help to me. And I should say too, after Rip that my husband and I are always in counsel and we found our counselor in Los Angeles through Therapy for Black Girls. Sure we did, and she is fantastic. I had a therapist, and then I just began to say, I need some goals for therapy, Like I can't just be coming to therapy to say how my day went or why it made me feel good or not, or always to be looking back on the terrible time of my teenage years and my tween years. And so what my personal counsel and I came up with was I wanted to be the kind of speaker that could talk about my story the most really hangous parts of my tween and teen years without breaking down. This was the goal because that would always happen to me and it would be very embarrassing for me. And it kept also from doing the kind of public speaking that I do now all the time on songbook and even here talking with you. So we just did a lot of work. I mean, I'm not gonna board with the details of the exercises and things like that, but it helped me so much over the course of and just being able to have someone to talk to about what I was doing and how I was doing it and how it was making me feel and something that she reminded me to do also with just there's so much morning about that part of my childhood that I just didn't really get to have. So she's like, you just have to entertain that child, like entertain that child. So I took that seriously. So I've always loved writing my bike, but you know, in New York, I couldn't do it as much. But now that I'm in California, let me tell you, I'm always on my bike. This was the joy of my child and in the freedom of my childhood, and I'm always on my bike. I'll be by and little outfits to wear on my bike. I gotta have the right little lights from my bike. I just got a new lock from my bike. It's lighter than the other locks, so it's not so heavy on my back when I'm writing, and it gives me so much space away from thinking about all of this stuff, even the other women's lives that I love writing about so much. So those were the things I think being in counseling. I'm blessed to have a supportive partner. It's a blessing in my life. And it's my second husband, so I haven't always had that and movements, specifically the bike I think has kept me saying I love that, I love that both she assigned that to you, but then oh, you have also taken your assigning so seriously. I'm nurturing that little girl and giving her the freedom and fun that you feel like you didn't have. I think that's important. It is fun. Yeah, it is fun. It really is m hm. So one of the things that I really enjoy just observing you from a Florid Danielle, is the sisterhood that it feels like you really cultivate, I think, especially with like younger journalists and also I think younger artists, and I just love for you to talk a little bit about, if you can, like how working with other women and telling the stories around other women has really helped you to kind of make sense of your own career in relationships. I mean, without question, it's been a journey, and I don't know if I was as good at it when I was younger maybe as I am over the last fifteen years. But one thing that I've never liked is just being like the only person. I don't like when there's women that I see that have so much talented and usually they're black women, but not even all the time who they're spectacular writers say, but no one has ever really told them that they have the skills to be an editor or to be in the leadership position, or maybe I can just talk to you about the things that you could do to become an editor or to become whatever, and is the next step in what you're trying to do. This brings me an intense amount of joy beyond Also, I don't have kids. We don't have kids, and so I think also it's just so much fun to see somebody like improve. It's so much fun to see somebody yeah, unable to do something, you know, at the top of a year, and then by the end of the year they get it, they can do it, and I've helped. It's really a joy. And I also just like the kids because they know what's going on now. I don't like to feel out of touch. I don't. I just don't. I was talking about my niece. I can say the same for my nephew. And I call some of my I call my baby girlfriends, and I shouldn't, but that's what I call them. And most of them are in their late twenties, thirties and some now going on in their forties, and they go out. I still go out, but not like I used to. I'm gonna go to the shows, but they're at the club, okay, and I want to know what going on. And so it's an awesome exchange, really, and I think it makes for rich relationships. And I think I have just things to offer. I've been in a long marriage now. A lot of women that I know, my baby girlfriends, they're either newly married or in new partnerships, or they're looking for partnerships that you know, they want to see grow. And I have my little advice for good better Otherwise. I'm not, you know, a therapist properly, but I have my my little just things that I know from experience. And I don't like Black women who have no one to talk to when they are ambitious. I love to see ambition in Black women and women in general. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it can make me feel old, but that's really only about ten to fifteen percent of the time. It really is because I really just love it too much. Like to listen to like the producers and stuff on Black Girl Songbook, and they're trying to get to the next stage of their life, and I could see in their face that same kind of interview that I had when I was their age. So the idea that one wouldn't help, that's trifling to me. I can almost just say to like, I just wasn't raised like that. I want people to succeed. I want their creativity to be fulfilled. I want them to know better how to deal with situations then I knew how to deal with them. And to me, it just seems like it's only fair and only right. And like I said, they're fun. They put me up on all the gossip, they teach me how not to text, like I'm an old lady. You know what I'm saying. It's good, yeah, And I mean, you know what, it feels like, there's so much iconic work that you have put out into the world. But I'm also aware that at the time you were doing it, you were wonder you if not only right, Like you know, there weren't very many sisters doing the kinds of things that you were doing until in some ways it kind of feels like a paying forward. But probably also I wish I had this, Oh man, do I and I had some of it? You know? I had some great women in my life, and I I had honestly a bunch of white males, some black males. I had people to help me along. But once you get past the part of writing about culture in the early nineties, back when hip hop wasn't accepted as the dominant cultural force that it is today, when in fact, we were being told that it was a fat and it would never last, and it wasn't real music, and it wasn't worthy of critique or celebration or anything. Man, Listen, some of those days were terrible. It's like every meeting you went into you were explaining the whole history of black music to get somebody to give us a third of a page on Oaktown's three five seven or something like that. So do I wish I had somebody like me back then? Of course I do. But I think I had a whole bunch of people that gave me a little bit that equaled up to a lot. I talked about some of them in Shine Bright. You know, there's a black woman at Vibe, Dane Cardwall, who really just you know, sometimes it isn't that a person has to be in your life every day for years. If a person is in touch with your spirit and your ambition, even if it's over the course of the creation of one magazine piece as a piece about mc hammer from my hometown, and she assigned it to me a six thousand words. I had never written anything I think more than maybe three thousand. That's elite. You have to keep so much together really getting from word one towards six thousand. It is in leite in expertise. And I remember Diane just telling me, you're not going to have a problem with it, and I was like, no, but I think I am though, I think I am going to have a problem with it, and she said, you know how to tell a story, you are going to be fine. I remember that as if it was yesterday. I filed it. I think it's seventy three d. And you see how I remember these numbers because it's a moment. I think we got it down to sixty four and I was mad for the cuts after thinking I couldn't get there. Like those kind of statements are so priceless, Like especially again if you come from a background where it doesn't have to necessarily even be abusive. Maybe people just thought whatever that you're going into isn't a smart idea. Maybe you want to be a painter and they want you to be a teacher. Maybe you want to join the armed forces and they want you to, you know, stay home and work the family business. It could be any situation. So when you have that person that just co signs your energy, it's priceless. So I try to do I do try to give that back when I can. Yeah. More from my conversation with Danielle after the break. So, how do you think that the way that we talk about black women in music has changed since you started writing, like across your career and how do you think your podcast and the book have contributed to that. It's not good the way it is now, but it's better, that's for absolutely sure. There's more of us. I'm a part of a group of women right now, and I think men to writing about Black culture and particularly black music in ways that hasn't been written about in the past. It just hasn't. When I think about what Clover Hope is doing with her mother Load about the Black women in hip hop, When I think about what Dr Daphne Brooks is doing with Line of Notes for Revolution talking about what black feminism sounds like. When I think about Donnie Walton, who wrote this experimental fiction called The Last Revival of Opal and Nev. It's like a fictional piece of journalism about this great group that never actually really existed in real life. But you definitely walk away feeling like it that duo did exist, And so it is different. You have Dream Hampton doing the work, and you know, in other ways, like the great work she did with documentary around Robert Kelly, Joan Morgan's When Chicken Heads Come Home to Ruth is still a classic. So a lot of people out here, the people that I should name that I'm that aren't coming to my head at this moment. But it is better. Don't want more, don't want better, but yes, like yes, I'm not mentioning Sylvia O. Bell, Kelly Carter. There's a lot of people, and I'm just talking about black women right now. So it's better, but it's not as good as it could be, especially quantity wise. The quality is there because we're all impassioned. So many of us believe in like research and rigor and reporting, and the passion is there because a lot of times, I think as a journalist of color, you're always being something of an advocate and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I never have, but yeah, I want more. And songbook does contribute to the conversation. I think it does. Shine Bright is contributing to the conversation. And you know, I like to the fact that with with songbook, I'm so used to writing and editing, so used to that way of doing things, and I do know that I'm really good at it. So it's really wonderful to be a beginner in audio with Songbook and have to learn. I can think of taj Rannie, who's the story consultant on Songbook truly, Joseph who used to work with me at ESPN, who's the producer of Black Girl Songbook. And I learned so much. And I've don't toss that she was an interner Vibe I know truly from when she was an intern at ys Fancy and defeated. So these women know me. They inspire me. I feel comfortable being vulnerable around them and not knowing things. I have to always remind them. You could tell me I said something stupid. Hello, if it was stupid, say that and they're like it was stupid, reel soft. I'm like, that's not how we say it was stupid, but you know that part of it is wonderful. And then there's other ways that I want to make sure that as long as I'm working this hard and I do love to work, that I branch out even further. I love the page, I love the computer screen, but there's other stuff. Mm hmmm. Can you give us a sneak peek of the other stuff? Yes, I absolutely can. Documentaries a shime, right, the documentary similar things. Yeah, it's like, come on, let's go. It's like, let's go. These are like, these are things that I've been thinking about for years and being scared and just been scared scared of what not being as good at it as I am at other things, leaning into the mean voices of my childhood, saying you have enough, nobody's that smart. You can't know more than two things at the same time. Those voices can get loud still on some days. Yeah, but it's lovely too to feel the feedback that I've been receiving it so far by shine Bright. And we have legions of enthusiastic Black Girl Songbook fans, and I always tell people I have been very serious about not saying when people send me a note on Twitter or something they like an episode or something. Same. Thanks for your support, because it isn't support to me as much as it is and encouragement. So I try to say that thank you for your encouragement when people say a kind thing about Shine Bright as well and really about anything, because for me, that's how I received it. I appreciate that you bought my book. I do, but I even read that as encouragement. It is encouragement, it says, Daniel, do more go further? Mm hmmm. I like that refrain. It feels important. M So what excites you about the ways that black women artists specifically are being covered now and kind of telling their own stories. That's a big question. One thing that I really like, especially coming from the magazine world of Yesteryear, is I love the selfies and everything that spins off from that. I love the fact that so many black women have control of their image in that way. I love that it's not a black woman standing passively in front of a photographer who used to be usually male and sort of until leaning to the left, lean to the right, smile, don't smile, pokey boobs out poke a ass out, no poke butt back in, put your breast down, coverm up. And I've been that person on set and in retrospective feels very controlling of the person the subject that we're all gazing at. And I remember when selfies first became very popular, so many men are more conservative men or even conservative women, acted like it was so conceited or vain or silly, just like it was when remember when all the girls wearing the flower crowns, and it was like, why are they doing that? It's so silly as so this, that and the other. And I pretty much came to a quick conclusion that it was revolutionary and I love it. And the tendrils go out. It's car do you on the cover of Vogue looking like Carding when fifteen years ago black women weren't even on the cover of Vogue And everyone forgets this. I write about it and shine bright. How Beyonce was told at the beginning of her career when she said she wanted to be on the cover of l or Harper's Bizarre or Vogue, and they were just the publicists were telling the truth when they said, that's just not a kind of thing that really happens. We can try, but it doesn't and then I see Cardi or Lupeta on the covers. It's just a matter of course looking like themselves. This brings me, It just brings me joy. And I'm old enough to look at it and say, it just literally did not used to be this way. You used to walk by all the magazines at the bookstore, are at the grocery store cash register where the magazines are, and you would literally unless s or Ebony or Vine or Latina, you just wouldn't see any black faces. It's one of the reasons I got into doing what I do. So to see it now when I go by a bookstore that still has a magazine, right and I see all the different shapes and sizes of black women and women of color on the cover of these magazines. Let me tell you the happiness. It's not perfect and it's not where it should be, right, but it's so much better than it was. Yeah. So you talked a little bit about the advice that you give to your baby girlfriends. I would love if you can share just some general advice for anybody who may be checking out the conversation who maybe it is interested in getting into the music industry, either as an artist, or like a journalist like yourself, What kinds of things would you want to share with them. I know we're living in pandemic times, and I know all of our social lives have been impact. You buy this, but I think if there's ways to in real life place yourself around other people that have similar goals, similar ambition, even if their goals are different than yours, so that you guys can just vibe together and encourage each other work together. You may have you know, a friend that wants to be a business manager. You have another friend that wants to be photographer. You have another friend who wants to be a singer, another friend who wants to be a rapper. You have another friend that just wants to make sure all the friends get along. Probably the most important friends get together wherever. Y'all get together and talk it through, have fun, go to shows, support artists that are trying to make it, try to get backstage, Say thank you, and you'll soon find yourself. Then you can start getting invited to things, and then when you're not there, people start wondering where you are. Then next thing you know, you're getting booked for things. And then when you get booked for something and they say, oh, what do you have? Have any photographs? All you have to do is say yes even though you don't, because you know you have a friend that's a photographer, and try to get that money and pay her expenses. Next thing you know, you're both getting booked as something like to me, this kind of thing still happens and it still works. You don't have to be isolated and in the silo. It's risky. Yes, somebody might actually say to you, I don't like what you're making. I think that's ugly. Why are you doing that? You should just get a real job. When you have the support of your community, you can cry to them about that. You could be emotional with them about that and keep going. It's my best advice is like, get a community around you that just really wants to lift you up and support you. On top of that, you have to take a hard look at the people that are around you already I know I did and still do. You have to assess who's bringing goodness into your life. And this is just my opinion, but if someone is not bringing goodness into your life, if you feel like every word out of their mouth, there's a slick comment that you. You You can't quite put your finger on that. It's a hundred percent insult, but somehow you still feel terrible. It just might be time to just maybe loosen those bonds a little bit, or don't be like me, because I'd be cutting people. But I'm just saying, y'all take it. And I've and I've learned it to do that though, and it's difficult and it's painful for me, but it's what works for me. I'm not a gradual type of sister, but I think it is better to loosen things slowly so that you're sure that you're doing the right thing, but don't endure pain because you think you ought to live your life. That feels very important. It feels like great advice for us to considering. Thank you, of course, of course I'm not having so much fun with you, honestly, that's so so thrilled to be able to chat with me today. So where can we grab I copy you of Shine Right? And how do we continue to support you and stay connected to you for these new exciting things that you be premiering. Oh that is such a good question. Well, if you want to read Shine Right on paper, you can just go to your local bookstore walk in. They're gonna be happy to see you going there. And even if my book isn't there, which it usually is asked for, that always makes me look good. Also, you can download it as an audio book and guess who's narrating. You can hear more of this little scratchy voice that you hear right now, super emotionally and passionately reading the shine Bright to you, talking about all of your favorite black women stars of today and yesterday. Black Girls Songbook is available now, not just on Spotify, but any place that you go to listen to your favorite podcast. And I'm always at the socials doing the most, doing too much and yet not enough. And I'm danimo. I'm mostly on I G and Twitter and it's d A N A m oh and I'm usually over there post and so foolishness. So do join me there too. I love it And as an o G relationship goals listener, are we are? We listen? Listen. I'm serious when I say I've been paying attention. Oh my god, wait till I tell Elliott. And You're gonna feel so conceited all day. You're gonna feel conceited all day? Are we ever gonna see any you know, pop up shows from the Relationship Goals podcast. You know, we really need to He tries to act like just because he has like a fancy job and stuff that you don't have time for relationship goals. But we really have to get back on. I think we need to just make it a goal. You know, we need to just make it a goal. We usually make goals at the top of the year, and like so many of us do, and we need to make it a goal because people did enjoy it and and we had fun doing it. We really was too fools together on that show, too rules together. We have to take a look at it. I'm glad you asked that. That makes me feel really good. I'm taking that right to Elliott when I get offer this call. So if there's a new season, y'all have me to thank for it. If your wife yes, I love it, I love it, we would be on there just talking about the most ridiculous things, every good conversation. Yes, yes, well, thank you, Danielle. I'm so again just so thrilled to have this time with you and to be able to share about your new project. Oh Dr Joe, you are a joy. And I know I'm not the first person to say it, thank you so much, and I know people maybe do thank you all the time for the great work that you've done and that you continue to do. But I'm gonna reiterate that we found our counselor through the work that you do, and we are appreciative of you up the side of just the way you've made therapy not seem like a topic that's not to be brought up, and all of these things. So it meant so much to me to receive this invitation. Thank you for having me. Thank you. I'm so glad Daniel was able to share her expertise with us today. To grab a copy of her book or to check out her podcast, be sure to visit the show notes at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash session to sixty one, and be sure to text two of your girls and tell them to check out the episode right now. If you're looking for a therapist in your area, be sure to check out our therapist directory at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash directory. And if you want to continue dig getting into this topic or just be in community with other sisters, come on over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy corner of the Internet design just for black women. You can join us at Community that Therapy for Black Girls dot com. This episode was produced by Freda Lucas and Alice Ellis and editing was done by Dennis and Bradford. Thank you all so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you all real soon. Take it care