This week Barbra Streisand, down to her last champion in the final battle of good versus evil, whipped out a nickel-plated Poké Ball and said, “I choose you, Memphis Bleek!”
This strange little shout-out got me reminiscing about the halcyon days of The Dynasty, and inevitably my thoughts turned, as they weirdly often do, to a different song on the album with a darker, unresolved thread: the final verse of “You, Me, Him and Her,” a posse cut featuring Jay-Z, Memphis Bleek, Beanie Sigel, and, lastly, Amil.
First, I’ll say, I feel weird spelling out the title because no one ever refers to this song by name. It’s better understood as that one Bink beat that rappers of all regions and vintages were apparently legally obligated to freestyle over for a solid 15 years, until rappers stopped freestyling altogether in the mid-2010s.
In any case, Amil, you’ll recall, was “the first lady of Rocafella Records.” That’s right: she was the token girl rapper permitted to languish in career purgatory so Jay and Dame could claim to be running an earnestly co-ed operation. Amil was strange: she rapped soft and high, at a weird sort of cruising altitude, which made her voice quite distinct in the contrast with so many male collaborators. If you recognize Amil from anything, it’d be “Can I Get A…” with Jay-Z and Ja Rule. Amil sings the hook and raps the second verse. And you know what? I’d say she’s got the best verse on this song. You ain’t gotta be rich but fuck that: / How we gon’ get around on your bus pass / ‘fore I put this pussy on your mustache… Striking candor. Indelible imagery. Come on now!
Amil gets a few other good looks on the tri-state rap classics of the Giuliani era, but she never really pulled it together as solo artist. Her debut album, All Money Is Legal, flopped, and so she went quietly into the night. Look: plenty of artists, e.g., Freeway (as much as I love his debut album, actually), foundered on Rocafella Records. But Amil didn’t fail or quit or retire so much as she evaporated. The overnight memory-holing of her whole damn career always struck me as the most bizarre and impressive evidence of the label’s dysfunction. Can someone with a savvier grasp of Photoshop than me graft Jay-Z and Amil into the rightful positions in this image? And then print it on the front a t-shirt with a decent cotton blend?
Several years ago Joe Budden, in his lengthy history dissertation, “Who Killed Hip-Hop,” thus summarized the first lady’s indignity: Somebody said they seen Amil working at a Target!
This brings us back to The Dynasty and “You, Me, Him and Her.” This album is out in October 2000. This is pretty much the last we hear from Amil. Her verse on this song is, in hindsight, rather haunting. Jay, Bleek, and Beans each get a couple dozen bars; Amil gets six, and she makes them count, with a profound cliffhanger. I must quote the verse in full:
A to the M-I, fem-i-nist,
Holding the semi; leave niggas faced with a dilemma:
‘Am I gonna run or stay? Can I
Get away’? No you can't. ‘Can't I surrender’?
And I, lazy bop, Mercedes hot,
In my way through the tunnel like Lady Di…
So Amil’s career more or less ends with her rapping, In my way through the tunnel like Lady Di, and then ominously trailing off. That’s crazy to me. I have never gotten over this. That’s some David Lynch shit. Who goes out like this? Even 2Pac was less cryptic. You’re on your way through the tunnel like Lady Di? You know she died, right? Hello? Ms. Whitehead? Amil? Amil?! Are you there?! Answer me!