“Keyshia Cole, ain’t nothing changed/You know her name/You see her ridin something clean/Lookin hella fly/She ain’t staying at the house/She going out/She won’t be curled up crying wit a broke heart/She bout to get dressed and go hard.”—Didn’t I Tell You, Keyshia Cole
This week 2.9 million viewers and 2.0 million households tuned in to watch the special one-hour finale of the BET reality show “Keyshia Cole: The Way it Is”, making it the most-watched series telecast in the history of the oft-criticized network.
If Run Simmons’s “Run’s House” portrays the ideal black family, “Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is”, is the polar opposite, settling intense camera lens into the life of R&B singer Keyshia Cole, as she attempts to put out ferocious emotional fires 30 minutes at a time. Emotional fires that sometimes stem from her own mental vertigo, but mostly sparked by her desire to reunite her family: her recovering crack addict mother Frankie, her recovering alcoholic sister Neffe, all the while trying to deal with her burgeoning career in the turburlent, destructive world of show business.
For social anaylysts who, in the mid-1980s, wondered what effects crack would have on the urban family, here is your case study.
Many young black women claim to have cried, whilst watching one powerful scene after powerful scene of the reality show. Myself included. How can one not. KCTWIT has all the elements of a sprawling ghetto soap opera, complete with the Pygmallionesque transformation of Frankie as she is morphed from a tootless, red-orange jumpsuit wearing ex-convict to a designer clothing-wearing mother who’s trying to wipe out the pain her absenteeism and drug addiction caused her family. Fits of anger, jealousy bouts, depression, accusations, uncertainty reign as the three women try to talk it out in a therapy session with a black psychologist. But there are somethings that therapy cannot remedy, as seen by constant subtle lashings from Neffe to Frankie, from Keyshia to Frankie and Neffe to Keyshia.
The season finale hit a nerve with viewers, as every issue from paternity to birth control take center stage. Definitely not your typical reality series fare. Over the last few episodes of the urban telenovela, there were moments that definitely were powerful; much more hard-hitting than the scene from the template files of a soap opera story dispenser. One of the most memorable is Neffe’s discovery of a pregnancy, stemming from a passing relationship with a male “friend” while separated from her husband. Another is a rather less personal scene, when Keyshia’s business manager chides her about her lavish spending on airfare, accommodation for her friends and her family. Keyshia nods with understanding, but it is clear that she’s torn between maintaining financial stability in the ever-fickle music business, and providing her family and friends the best of what her success has to offer.
There used to be a time when the more exclusive an artist made himself or herself, the greater the fame. The less shown to fans the better, pop stars once thought. But Keyshia Cole is part of a new generation of thought. And looks like her lack of exclusivity to her fans has only served to endearing her to them.
Critics have said that Viacom’s little whore—that’ll be BET—has to improve on its programming—and that the network has to churn out shows that depict black folks in better light, but with the Cole show, it doesn’t get more real than this, to borrow a phrase from Ms. Keyshia Cole herself.
