The first time I ever saw Camille Yarbrough's stunning, regal face, it was looking up at mefrom a dingy beige crate on a loud, bustling street in New York City's East Village district. You see, as a relatively young poet and music journalist. I collect albums - vintage ones - in hopes of securing some rare piece of wax history someone, somewhere, has tossed aside for the CD and mini-disc revolution. I plucked Ms. Yarbrough's album. The Iron Pot Cooker, from that create and examined it closely. Although I did not buy it then - poverty was real., yo - I remember thinking to myself that I know this woman isn't she a book writer, a professor, an activist? Isn't she the frined the colleague, the soul sister of someone I know?

That cover image of Camille Yarbrough stuck with me for some time: the half-lit countenance of a honey-brown woman with soft, silky skin: the long, dangling African-oriented earrings, the mid-size and perfectly coifed afro. And, yeah the power of that expressionless gaze. It was, in fact, the gaze that got me: Here, I thought, is a serious woman, a serious black woman.

It would be a few years before I actually listened to The Iron Pot Cooker. Honestly, I had no idea how ingenious this album was. As a hiphop journalist, I was keenly aware of the influence of musical wordsmiths like the Last Poets, Gil-Scott Heron, and Melvin Van Peebles on what is popularity called rap music. Because hiphop hs traditionally been a very male-centered art form I naively assumed that its forebears, too., had been men. This historical and cultural omission speaks volumes about the continued ignorance and oppression of women artists in American culture. Or, I should say, women artists who don't necessarily conform to notions of what we men think a female artist should be. Think Nina Simone's fearlessness, think Billie Holiday's restless quest for life's meaning, think Harriet Tubman's selfless activism, and you begin to inch toward the mental and spiritual yearnings of Camille Yarbrough.