Last week, I praised MTV for putting transgendered woman in the spotlight via America's Best Dance Crew. Leomi reps the NY ballroom seen as part of Vogue Evolution, ABDC's first gay and transgender dance crew. The crowd loves her and them, and you can bet your knock-off Gucci bag that every ballroom kid in NY pulls out their crafted/boosted cell phone and texts in their votes weekly.

They also use one of the hosts as a vehicle to let America know that, though this particular one is late and fashionably clueless, men-turned-women are people, too. Dammit.

Thank you Lil Mama.

BET has also reached new heights (or lows, depending on how you view the situation) this season. With their new programming, BET expanded its cast of reality show "stars" to include two loveable, inspirational rapper semen-receptacles, Tiny & Toya.

Toya is tolerable. After initially writing her off as another rapper baby mama who was just the latest beneficiary of television's apparent reality show free-for-all, I've come to respect Toya. Kinda.
As the ex-wife of rap's top Koopa Troopa, Lil Wayne, Toya makes it clear (in every episode) that she wanna do huh own thang, o-kayyy? And she does. Toya takes risks every week. She combats her fear of water (read: wets her sew-in in a pool for the first time) on camera. She mends relations with her father, hires a ghostwriter and starts writing a book, and pretends to understand Tiny's strokemouth speak, week after week. And I love huh fa that. Even though she's a grown woman with braces, Toya ain't so bad.

Then there's Tiny.

(deep breath)

Where to begin?

Ah, yes.

If Desperate HouseRenters of Atlanta's NeNe is a trainwreck, then Tiny is a mid-air jumbo jet collision...with a bunch of special kids and cute puppies on board.

Tiny is the resident albino of xtinct 90's R&B group Xscape. She shows uneducated and otherwise hopeless chicks across Atlanta and the world that the "way out" is to spread those tatted-up legs to a drug dealer and/or gun-toting rapper and pray to Saint Soulja Boy for the best results. As I've repeatedly expressed to my peers, I never remembered her being such a sloppy, garbling, country, McWretched mess. I guess back then, the emphasis was more on sangin' (and, apparently, cranking out dumpy-looking babies), with little emphasis on actual speech. All we needed to know was that these chicks would rock the latest hood styles and would sing their asses off.



Watching Tiny brings several things to mind. For one, I imagine her chilluns must pray every night to wake up the next day less and less like their mother. I was tempted to consult Google for any reported cases of strokes that only affect the bottom half of one's face.
I'll go ahead and say it: that top lip clearly has its own hearteat and publicist. As Toya would say, "it just wanna do iss own thang." A Tracy Morgan-like effect also comes to mind: there is entirely TOO much space (at LEAST two fingers)between the nose and that unruly ass top lip. And I don't trust it.

Whew.

Despite all of that, I applaud the girls' efforts to better themselves. With her two groups, the "OMG Girlz" and "Juice", Tiny's jumping back into music. Good job. Toya is allegedly engaged in a "bidding war" (her words) to publish her book. Silky Yakytastic.


The bigger achievement is that the world now realizes that even without all necessary chromosomes or control over your top lip, you can get our own reality show. Those of you who laughed at that "touched" kid in your 5th grade class (assuming she went that far) could soon be watching them spend their incarcerated spouse's money while raising their unsuspecting, overfed kids week after week on BET.

Think twice before you chortle at the thought of that string of drool hanging on Lil Tiny's lip. SHE and her former bandmate Kandi (who stars on Desperate HouseRenters of Atlanta) have abandoned English and created their own language, apparently. What have YOU contributed to society?

*silence*

That's what I thought.

The season/series finale aired tonight on BET, making room for everybody's favorite junkie mom, FRANKIE (the preschool bombing to Tiny's jumbo-jet collision). Mo' coonin' comin' yo way, folks!

Stay tuned.

also found at Judgmentally Yours...
-chris.alexander

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