Yo Majesty
While so many rappers grope vainly for realness, Yo Majesty brashly flash their freakiness in your face. “All my life I had to hide who I was in public and from my family,” says Jwl. B (Jewel Baynham), who, along with Shunda K (Lashunda Flowers), makes up the Tampa, Florida MC duo. “Our album is a freedom statement; it’s about showing the public it’s okay to be different.”
Two sometimes-topless black lesbian Christians whose sound bumps like nuclear crunk, Yo Majesty are as evangelical as they’re raunchy. “I’m the minority of the minority,” says Shunda. “When people see my black gay ass, I got my head up with self-confidence.
I ain’t worried ’bout shit. I’m trying to be an example and get people inspired. You can’t depend on your pastor, your mama, your daddy—you got to get to know God yourself. Everyone has been deceived by religion.”
Shunda knows about such deception firsthand. From 2003 to 2005, she stopped making music after performing as Yo Majesty with different lineups since 1998, married a man she describes as a “prophet,” and moved to North Carolina. “I was being brainwashed,” she says. “I kept hearing that being gay was an abomination—and I didn’t want to go to hell.” After she returned to Tampa, David Alexander of electro duo hardfeelingsuk (who produced the early Yo Maj track “Club Action”) persuaded Shunda to re-form the group, and one of his beats became the much-remixed “Kryptonite Pussy,” which led to a record deal with Domino.
On their full-length debut, Futuristically Speaking…Never Be Afraid, Yo Majesty get production help from U.K. dance-floor luminaries Basement Jaxx and Radioclit, among others, and they toured Europe earlier this year. Still, their future remains problematic, and the twosome often seem on the verge of breaking apart. (They refused to pose together for a Spin shoot.)
“I don’t drive no Benz,” says Jwl. B, her voice rising with emotion. “I am still struggling, broke, not a dollar in my pocket. I’m like any other thug walking down the street in Tampa; I’m just one of the hard women in the area.”
> Now divorced and with a degree in business administration, Shunda K is engaged to a woman and wants to have a baby through in vitro insemination this year. > Shunda also plans to tour Texas for a month on what she calls “The Real Love Tour.” The opening act will be her gay pastor.
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