American

This blog is a big fan of music and of literature, and it's an odd day when the two end up at pitted ends of this blog's opinion scale.  Alas, losing sleep does not behoove this blog, so let's clear the blog air on an entirely personal-beef, arts soapbox topic--the conceptual rubber-match: hip-hop artist, Dessa v. author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 

Dessa's 2010 album, "A Badly Broken Code" struck me, rhythmically, lyrically and creatively.  I also respect that she's a she in a game that's almost entirely all he's.  After several loops of her album and humming along, certain segments began to surface.  For example, in her song, "Matches to Paper Dolls" she says "Now we're lost/Between love and cholera/Saccharine read.../Such a sentimental novel/Give you cavities"...lyrically it flows, it's clever, and it sounds good.  But stop the Dessa train right there.  I'm a Gabriel Garcia Marquez fan, and she just took some pretty heavy swings at, perhaps his most infamous novel, Love In the Time of Cholera.  Of course, we're all entitled to our opinions, but, Dessa, dear Dessa from Minnesota even if you went to Columbia, I think your red white and blue stripes bleed perhaps a bit ignorantly.

#1: The English language severely lacks in words, terms or phrases that address emotions and feelings.  Just in using the word "emotion" there is, literally, figuratively and culturally, baggage that is attached to it.  Considering that GGM's work is Latin American in origin, the original language was one of the Romance category, and not as a justification, excuse or explanation, I proffer that perhaps the tone was "lost in translation" on dear Ms. Dessa.
#2:  The author of the book Dessa's lyrics deem so distastefully sweet is practically, if not, solely responsible for the genre "magical realism".  Your literal cavities are holes to your brain, Dessa, if that aesthetic is really so lost on you.

It seems ironically trite that in a song titled, ironically and tritely, "Matches to Paper Dolls", the verbiage of the lyrics makes blatantly American use of the problematic term "sentimental" on a piece of work that is neither American nor literal.

Life sometimes can be American.
  American: --adjective
of or pertaining to the United States of America