Letter from the editor April 2003

Interview, April, 2003 by Ingrid Sischy

"I refused to be a stereotype," explains Ms. Dynamite on page 158 of this issue. The singer has already caused a sensation in her own country, Britain, with her mold-breaking album A Little Deeper, which seemed to come out of nowhere and against all odds won her the prestigious Mercury Prize, beating out some favorites and some stiff competition. The record itself is its own musical smart bomb, which is now aimed at the American music scene, with its recent release. On the record, Ms. Dynamite criticizes how cliched hip-hop has become, and how stuck on itself it seems to be. She rallies against misogyny, racism, violence, and much else, with a voice that is both personal and political, and she manages to infuse her lyrics with intelligence, great rhymes, and true substance.

As you'll see, that substance is echoed in the Ms. Dynamite interview we publish here. In her conversation with David Furnish, the woman born Niomi McLean-Daley 21 years ago tells us about her journey. She remembers:

I've had so many teachers who have looked at me like, "Niomi, the mouthy, feisty, cheeky, loud little black girl who's never going to amount to anything."... I've always been aware that the odds were against me--I grew up in a single-parent family, a working-class family, with a white mum, as a black child--you know, the list goes on. But there is no way I'm going to live up to what certain people expect me to be.

It's not that Niomi's experience is unique. Plenty of people have had similar lives; in fact, lots have been through way more hell. The point is what she, as Ms. Dynamite, has done with her experience. It happened casually, not from a grand plan, but she had the wits to recognize what was occurring. She recalls:

It was [at] a friend's birthday party in a club, and everyone was like, "Go on--sing, emcee!" So I did, and from that second, I just remember feeling like, "Wow, I haven't felt this good for such a long time." And it wasn't because I was drunk. It was because all these people appreciated what I was doing. I was giving something to them--and they were giving back to me this whole buzz of being onstage.

And so a true performer was born, one who transforms her own experience into illumination and who says over and over in one way or another how important it is to be true to oneself. It's perfect that she's a part of this issue, which could almost be titled "The True-Blue Issue," since so many of the personalities in it stand out for how true they have been to their hearts, their ideas, and their dreams. There's Salma Hayek, for instance, whose dedication to representing the life of Frida Kahlo on film was unwavering. Frida, the result of her dream made real, ended up earning six Oscar nominations this year, but when you read the interview with Hayek by Penelope Cruz (who also shot the pictures) in this issue, you'll get the feeling that, while that's all nice, what really matters is that people did their all to tell Kahlo's story, and to pass it on to audiences who might not otherwise be aware of it.

When it comes to being true blue, is there anyone more loved in the movies for precisely that quality than our cover subject, Jack Nicholson? You'll read all about the ways in which Nicholson stays true--to his characters and to his friends--in the piece we have in store for you, which begins on page 148. But here's a little recollection from his best buddy, Robert Evans, to give you a quick sense of the man:

When I was at my low, Jack insisted that I be his date at the Academy Awards when he was up for Ironweed [1987]. I didn't want to go. The last time I was there, I was nominated for an award, and this time everything was going wrong. He said, "I want you to be my date. I want to walk in with you tonight." ... He wanted me to go down there on his arm because he wanted to show everybody in the industry that I was his guy and he was my guy. We went to the Governors Ball, and table by table, he walked me over to everyone, his arm around me, saying, "Evans, he's the best," just to give me my confidence back. It was one of the best nights of my life.

That's a story about steadfastness in times that feel unsure and slippery. It's no news that the world at large is experiencing such times. Ms. Dynamite says something beautiful on that score at the end of her interview: "As long as we keep talking, others will keep talking, and then they'll keep talking--and one day everything will get better. We have to believe that."