It appears that Pennsylvania is the current home of nabiyah, apparently a Hebraic feminization of the word prophet. This is what the area code suggests of her booking number on the promotional CD the mother of my second child handed to me. The packaging on the CD suggests that nabiyah is young, physically attractive, professional and organized. This alone is not meant to be praised as many an obedient employee can easily posses these attributes. When these qualities and the poetry are together in the same healthy body, we have something here to make us stop and take notice.

What further distinguishes nabiyah is her relaxed delivery that is more like a deeper version of Erykah Badu than yet another young woman trying to sound like Audrey Lorde, with yet another poem about sex that Ms. Lorde would find “limiting.” The title track of this presentation is true to the respectable traits of hip hop: taking a sample from pop culture and turning it into an expression not intended by the corporate masters dominating urban consciousness. “The look the feel of cotton” is a brilliant example of this approach. None of these works are about sex or vengeance; all of these works are about the work within, the will to explore self and find The Comforter, the Heritage of one descended from Africa.

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