Fires In The Mirror

This interview was conducted in 1989, while Mo was Smith’s student at UCLA, and took place at Smith’s office. For the play, Smith changed the performance to be more theatrical, as she had witnessed Mo’s acting to be. Mo speaks about how many female rappers sell their body to become famous. However, there are exceptions: Queen Latifah, who is intelligent or “Lyte who’s just hard and people are scared by her / hardness, / her strength of words” (35-36). Mo views these women as her role models because she wants the image of a strong black woman. She doesn’t like Big Daddy Kane’s rap because he just talks the whole song, especially when he uses Puerto Rican and white girls to justify his attractiveness. Mo asks why black girls aren’t good enough for him.

Some of Mo’s friends say they can’t listen to her work because she bashes men, but Mo says “’It ain’t men bashin’, it’s female assertin’’” (37). She doesn’t like how her friends accept that they are perceived as hoes, which is reinforced by some song lyrics. But most of these songs she does not consider rap because rap must have rhythm and poetry, which she defines as expression and intelligence.