Redeeming Ray-Ray

The Baltimore Block blog has been quiet of late. Let me tell you, the block hasn’t been on fire with late summer parties. What remains of the non migratory block population has been ensconced in the library, cramming for biostatistics. But an unseemly headline from the local rag B the Spot has roused us from self-imposed seclusion to revisit the blog waters.

The Monday, August 31 headline looked straightforward at first: It read, “Rye Rye’s Ready to Rumble — MIA Protege Busts Out of B-More”. Our first thought: Rye Rye is leaving Baltimore! Sad but predictable: Another awesomely talented Charm City music icon leaves urban backwater for the Platinum-paved streets of New York City.

The shocking disingenuity of the headline revealed itself when the reader turned to page 16 and read the heartbreaking update about the teenager who British pop star M.I.A. has sampled in chart-topping singles like the remix for Paper Planes. We’ve heard her distinctive girlish high toned raps pipe up in hipster boites here and overseas.

The story–penned not by B or parent paper The Sun but by the Washington Post’s Kate Kilpatrick–is about the trauma that makes kids in Baltimore “grow up fast” as the original story was subtitled in the Post when it came out on August 2 (what made B wait for 30 days to run this thing?).

Rye – Rye’s debut album on Interscope was scheduled to come out this year. Now, she’s preggers, due in October, and the record is on hold. She’s waiting to see if Interscope drops it (and her, as a client) like it’s hot.

But the story’s not only about her getting knocked up. That’s pretty routine for a teen living the projects in East Baltimore, where “.45 caliber bullets punctuate sultry summer nights,” as Post writer Kilpatrick puts it. Her baby daddy, Evan Battle, recently caught one of those bullets — well, actually 4. He was reportedly shot in the shoulder, back, arms, lungs and spinal cord. He’s now paralyzed from the waist down.

She was in Norway waiting to go onstage with M.I.A. when she heard her boyfriend was shot.

Standing by her man in Baltimore’s Kernan Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation center for spinal cord injuries, the 7-month pregnant would-be superstar told Kilpatrick “I’m not gonna leave him.”

So just to wrap up: B’s MTV-knockoff styling and “ready to rumble” headline has nothing to do with the story inside. “Busting out of Bmore” is not equal to “having baby, with boyfriend now paralyzed from stray bullets”. It’s a freaking shame that to sell a free paper the B editors would put something so misleading on the cover, on the most deadly serious subjects kids in Baltimore deal with.

Mad props to the girl for having the guts to open up about her life. Let’s hope Interscope sees the power of her message, and her raps, and rockets her to fame with the likes of the Black Eyed Peas, 50 Cent and Gwen Stefani. You go girl.

Thanks for listening. Now back to statistics.