From my perspective, this independent music video is an empowering move, especially in face of all the changes in the music industry nowadays. To paraphrase The Killer, there's a whole lotta shakin' goin' on. "You should be glad you don't have a record deal," someone in the business told me recently. Well. I'm glad I don't have a bad record deal, I countered. The beat goes on, regardless. I've always got one eye on a video channel somewhere because mentally, I'm usually fine-tuning my own. Lately, I'd been watching them in earnest. Every so often, something interesting would jettison onto the screen, but I had to dig for it. Most of the videos I saw on BET were, in a word, stultifying.

When I began to seriously consider what I wanted to say, I felt an enormous amount of responsibility towards a clarity of vision. Film and video is a director's medium. I didn't understand how my intent could come through the video if I'm not the one who's directing or editing it. In discussions with Monica, I quickly realized that I have to trust her in this process because that's the way film works. There are no guarantees, ever. You can have the best director, the best script, the best actors and the best intentions-and still make a clunker.

Besides, it's very hard to shoot black women. It must be, because hardly anybody ever gets it right. That's what I really wanted to talk to her about.

I don't consider myself to be a feminist by today's standards because I don't think the popular idea of feminism comes anywhere near who I am as a black woman. Camille Paglia said, "The more clothes a woman takes off, the more power she has." I used to think she was right when I was, like, nineteen. Now that I've had to make my way in the world, I'm not so sure anymore. Sex doesn't equal power for me. At least, not the kind of power that I'm interested in. All that Girl Power stuff is cute, but none of that is going to help me if you're a white guy and I'm doing the same job as you and I'm not getting paid as much as you are. Is me being naked going to give me equal pay for equal work?

I know I'm not alone on this one. I can't be.

It's an extremely difficult thing, to not have the world perceive you as a whore if you're a black female-or at the very least, oversexed. That's true for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is our collective history as a nation and as a people of African descent. We are all connected, all of us, everywhere. Myth is the hambone in the stew that is our culture. It informs so many stereotypes... I could go on about oppression and imperialism, and give a backstory of the blackgrrl in America. I could whine about the media like everybody else does and plead artistic freedom for a lot of what I see and hear in hip-hop that isn't all that kosher. You don't necessarily have to take all of that into consideration when you shoot a black woman, but you'd be nuts if it didn't cross your mind a few times. Our past and our myths are encrusted all over who we are, like barnacles on a whale's backside. But it doesn't have to strangle us.

It's inevitable that I'll have to mudwrestle with everyone's perceptions of who I am. Maybe someone will look at this video and think, "What kind of a black girl is this?" I know that they won't know what kind. And that's the point. They aren't supposed to know. Or even guess. If I can be myself and in so doing, force others to see me as myself instead of their idea of what a black woman is, I win.

Let the shooting begin...