When Good Girls Get Dirty with Microphones or The Jill / Tina Effect
Social media exploded recently when a video of Jill Scott’s sex-capades during a 2007 live performance surfaced. While performing the hit Crown Royal, the Philadelphia-native simulated fellatio on a stage microphone. The minute-long performance captured on audience cell phone cameras, went viral, November 12.
And while it caused a stir among some, millions more who viewed the clip, including Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and Trey Songz, went completely “doolally.” Songz, even released an “ode” of sorts to Scott just today (November 18) entitled, Jill (Sumn Real).
An unfazed Scott, tweeted about the old footage going viral saying, “I sing/act out all kinds of stories. You should cum to my shows. After a Jill Scott show, most people get splendidly laid by whoever they came with😁👍🏽🎶🤪🎉 #iftheydontFitup #stopfrontinusuckdicktoo. They also usually go on 2happier, more productive, focused, wealthy lives.”
Equally important and under the heading “Nothing New Under the Sun,” is a very similar oral fixation from 1968, when the fellatio artist was none other than Tina Turner.
In a live rendition of Otis Redding’s, I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue lead audiences around a few corners with what was described by a 1971 Rolling Stone magazine article as a “solid salute to sex as a base for communication.”
More exact, Ike & Tina’s stage antics became a soft porn exhibition that opened informal dialogues about Black women and sexual taboos.
“Both Scott and Turner represent those Black female singers, who like almost every African-American woman on the planet has been warned off of two types of sexual practices from birth – oral and anal sex,” sociologist Darnice Mackey told Acumen magazine. “Hang-ups about anal and oral sex are generational and the taboos associated with them – that the acts are dirty, they promote disease, or that they are only enjoyed by low-class or professional sex workers, makes the average Black woman, hesitant to admit she does it – let alone, enjoys it.”
Mackey said Scott and Turner heightened the discussion by publicly intimating their skills at performing oral sex.
“Old-school respectability politics dictates that only those with ‘sexpot’ images like Millie Jackson (whose Slow Tongue would make for modern-day PornHub material) express their sexuality in such a direct manner,” Mackey said. “Just the fact that as a journalist you have to determine if it is okay to use terms like ‘blowjob,’ or ‘head,’ is less about professional rules than the temperament of your readers. Even when it is a married couple like the Turners engaging in on-stage sex play, the belief is that a man would not allow his wife to air their bedroom habits unless she was a particular type of female. This is something we have to get away from.”
The Turner’s, unlike Scott, remained split on the benefit of the overt sexual nature of I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, though the Revue staged it until formally disbanding.
“We cut the song and Ike kept playing the tune over and over and I had to ad lib, so I just did that – just what comes into your head,” Tina said in a 1971 interview. “So, we started doing it on stage, but I don’t think it can go any further, because it’s gotten pornographic… Sometimes [Ike] shocks me, but I have to be cool. Sometimes I want to go, ‘Ike, please.’ I start caressing the mike and he goes, ‘Wait ’til I get you home,’ and I feel like going, ‘Oh, I wish you wouldn’t say that.’ But like I can’t question Ike because everything that Ike has ever gotten me to do that I didn’t like, was successful.”
Makey said she believes the Turner’s rendition remained a crowd-pleaser because when all is said and done, audiences want to feel comfortable with and connected to performers.
“Scott and Turner showed sides of themselves that perhaps some women envy or now feel more comfortable about exploring. One thing for sure, the responses from men – whether they are joking or not – is they want their lovers to check Scott out, so they can learn a thing or two from her,” Mackey said. “I’m eager to expand the dialogue because there seems to be a lot of longing for good sex out there.”