If I tell you Danyel Smith is a writer and editor who grew up in Oakland, California, in the nineteen-seventies, and went on to become one of the nation’s most astute chroniclers of pop and hip-hop culture—especially through her leadership of Vibe magazine, in the nineties—how much am I actually telling you? How much am I leaving out? “To say I ‘became’ editor-in-chief of Vibe in 1994—and the first woman and the first Black person to have the job, and the first woman to run a national music magazine—is a criminal abbreviation,” Smith writes in her new book, “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop.” Although the book gives us her backstory, it is not primarily a memoir. It is an experiment in intertwining her own stories of self-doubt, love, and ambition with those of the Black-women artists she profiles—from the nineteen-sixties hitmakers the Dixie Cups to icons such as Jody Watley and Mariah Carey. These are artists who collectively created the sounds and styles of American pop.
Although I had not met Smith prior to our conversation, I had admired her writing and anticipated the publication of “Shine Bright” for many years.
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