British singer-songwriter Marsha Ambrosius has flourished over the course of a decade-long career. She scored hits as 1/2 of the innovative duo Floetry, she scored a massive smash as the co-writer of Michael Jackson’s last major hit, “Butterflies”, she arranged vocals and/or sang on a slew of hits for others (most notably Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River”), and she survived almost having her career mangled by Dr. Dre (unlike Dawn Robinson, Rakim, Busta Rhymes, Truth Hurts…need I say more?)
Marsha’s debut solo album has been in the works for quite some time. The single “Hope She Cheats on You (With a Basketball Player)” was a moderate-sized hit last fall, and she’s now released the video for the second single, “Far Away”. The song itself is good, but the video officially puts it over the top. I’m extremely grateful to see a black artist tackle homophobia, since homosexuality is one of the most taboo topics in the black community. Making a video like this took major balls, and she deserves applause for being only the second R&B artist that I know of to tackle this in video form (with Me’Shell Ndegeocello having been the first nearly fifteen years ago with “Leviticus: Faggot”.)
While I still have major issues with homophobia having a pretty bow wrapped on it’s nomenclature and turned into the catch-all term “bullying”, the video’s intentions are certainly in the right place.