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Editor’s note: The new name for domestic violence is Intimate Partner Abuse. Get familiar bitches.

I was going to write about this crazy drama that happened in my building parking lot last week, a la Amadeo’s experience, and it would have been a good story. It involved three homeless people, their shopping cart, a six floor balcony and my regular’s BMW and then, to quote CeezDiem, “I saw this motherfucking video.”

Now let us all get up on our Hip Hop and R&B high horses about Ashanti’s singing, the song’s production, the money laundering, the fucking for tracks, about how this wack ass music isn’t even on our level, yada yadda ya. The point is that this music video is going to be, if it hasn’t already been, seen by millions of people. Premiering on BET last week and running in heavy rotation this week, it’s clear that Ashanti isn’t going to sell any records but everybody’s going to see her damn video. We all know the motto:

Sex: If you’ll splay it, we’ll play it!

I love music. I will listen to most anything at least three times before I make a decision. I have a CRAZY music library made up of everything from Suzanne Vega to DJ Khaled. Yes, even DJ Khaled. I know what you are thinking, but I’m always down for a party record. Trust me, I’m not banging it on the regular. Oh, and pause to banging Khaled on my regular.

What’s frustrating is that the people at BET will have us believe that the programming on that channel reflects the entertainment needs and standards of the Black community in a culturally relevant and sensitive way. In honor of MY favorite show, Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit!!!

Apparently this video is a not so loose spin-off of the Oxygen channel’s ‘Snapped.’ Have you ever seen that show? Basically it’s real life crime analysis from friends, reporters detectives and the like, of women and cases where they went bat shit and fucked somebody up. You know, a woman scorned type shit. The lady who ran her husband over with her Mercedes and then backed up and did it again a few times, remember her? They featured her on the show, to give you an example of these brawlic bitches.

Maybe I was busy when I glanced at the video for the first time, I already knew the concept, but it took my second viewing before I realized that the direction of the video was not to create the illusion that Ashanti had killed her cheating lover, but to remove all doubt. She stabbed him with a knife from the kitchen they shared. They show dude in the bathtub, a presumed dead body, a 911 call, complete with grainy mugshot footage, rushed and hurried court scenes and the raw and emotional agony at the loss of life at the hands of a loved one.

Cut to Ashanti breathing hard in a bathtub with perfectly applied eye shadow. Wait! It’s only entertainment.

This is not the first time Ashanti has dabbled in the intricacies of domestic violence (you may remember “Rain on Me”) but it is certainly the more graphic of the two. What the fuck is wrong with people? Ashanti just don’t know. Cheating, jilted, and delusional spouses exist in our
communities, on our blocks, in the next house over.

In January of 2007 in a small town on the East Coast, months after they separated, this man fatally shot his wife. Four times in the chest, point blank with a .357 Magnum. It was reported that this man thought his wife was cheating on him while they were still together; town lore is that the marriage was over for years, “just neither of them knew it…” Allegedly this man went around this small town on the East Coast in 2007 the weekend before the murder telling people that his wife only had 48 hours to live. No one believed him though.

As the story goes, on that fateful day in January, the man shot his wife, four times in the chest, point blank with a .357 Magnum. Turns out this woman had children, four of them and three grandchildren. The woman’s teenage son was at home from school sick that day and he arrived at the house where the murder occurred, his grandmother’s house. There he saw the yellow Police ape, his mother’s car doors opened, detectives swirling about, he was taken to the hospital and told nothing. Family members were called, prayers were said.

“Hi. Are you okay? I just wanted to let you know that I am praying to God and asking Him to intervene and make a way…”

“Don’t worry,” people said to the woman’s family. “She’s going to be okay.”

But it wasn’t okay and it never would be again, because she was gone. Gone. She was killed by her husband of 24 years, father to her four children and Grandfather to her three grandchildren. He shot her four times in the chest, point blank with a .357 Magnum in a small town on the East Coast in January 0f 2007.

Maybe we should thank Ashanti for her crafty, creative, innovative way of showing true life. Let’s encourage artists to continue to speak on these very real experiences. It’s working!!!

Are you not entertained?

Are you not entertained?!

Isn’t that why you are here!?!