In my previous article "The Genesis", we ended on a lighter, Elizabethan note, a famous quote from Shakspeare’s Twelfth Night, "If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it, that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die." I’d bet a million dollars that there are millions, if not billions of people who’d dispute The Bard of Avon’s paradigm in view of the Hip Hop culture and it’s general portrayal of women, which at times is nowhere close to being the food of love.

However, Mark Anthony Neal, associate professor in the Black Popular Culture Program in African and African-American Studies at Duke has pointed out how Hip Hop is not the first black art form to contain violence towards women. According to Neal, the black legacy of violence includes notable figures like James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Patti LaBelle, Ike and Tina Turner and others. Hip Hop is not causing anything. It is reflecting. The genre simply reflects how untold millions of black women feel they are to love their men in spite of himself. Which is maybe why they decide to live with abuse. Being black I felt I had to touch on that.

Back to Twelfth Night, I like to interpret William Shakespeare’s quote as a metaphor, a comparison of unity, that of music and relationships, with both, there are two specific things or entities being combined. At the end of the day what I’m advocating for, considering we’re talking of music, moreso sticking to the positivity of reform we mentioned in "The Genesis", is a kind of musical conglomerate or union in relationships, relationships of all forms. The instrumental plus the words equal a song, reinforcing our point, the point that "It Takes Two". Two combined can equal one, a force, then the sky is the limit, in a more simplified form:

        Instrumental + Lyrics = Music
        Man                + Woman  = Music, Love & Harmony

I’ll try and stress this, "It Takes Two" will strive to offer solutions and ways to curb domestic violence, unlike most articles you read on domestic violence we aren’t going to focus on who is to blame, the chastisement of the abuser and sometimes even the abused. The purpose of this column is best articulated by Carolyn, one of my colleagues, as she says, "That is the beauty of the Bell Bajao campaign, trying to bring the audience into the dialogue and let the audience know that they are part of the solution…"(In the News: Domestic Violence and Film)