Part 8: Tonéx vs. Everybody
Taking him at his word, calling Williams (or Tonéx, not entirely sure which one came out) gay is likely oversimplifying a complex human experience. Expurgating him from the church (or at least from our iPods) would be an ironic overreaction considering how seemingly intolerant Tonéx's narrow-minded Apostolicism once was. I presume the choice to release The Naked Truth with the cussing and homoerotica had some creative merit and/or made some artistic point, but Tonéx clouded the issue and stigmatized whatever journey he was on by becoming disturbingly less overtly spiritual as he became disturbingly more androgynous. In this respect, Tonéx's evolution to B.Slade is the realization of every reactionary Old School church deacon campaigning to get all this dancin' and "jazzy" music out of the church: they're all saying "I Told You So."
Pastor
Anthony Charles Williams II
better known by a number of stage names, the most popular of
which is “Tonéx,” now performs as Brian (abbreviated “B.”)
Slade, whose Suxxess Records release,
Diesel, dropped
last week. Slade is apparently also starring in The Who’s
classic musical, Tommy, at the San Diego Repertory Theatre.
Williams is among the more outspoken and enigmatic LGBT faces in
Christian ministry. From his 2000 major label debut, Pronounced
Toe-Nay, Williams developed a quixotic Prince-style air of
mystery and unpredictability about himself and his artistry,
producing some of the most inventive and affecting Christian
worship music of our time, culminating with the powerful anthem,
“Make Me Over,” from his award-winning multi-platinum 2-disc set
Out The Box. Williams has indeed made himself over many, many
times, moving effortlessly from his roots in traditional
conservatism (in the coda to “Make Me Over” Williams insists you
must speak in tongues as evidence of the charismatic experience
in order to be saved) to outlandish Euro-pop (“Fail
U”) to music
that might be about God, might be about
a lover, might be about his dog (“You Bring Me Joy”), to expletive-ridden anti-music
label rants (“The Naked Truth”) and back again. Williams seems
to revel in confounding Church Folk and, like Prince, at times
seems to be charting his own course and at other times seems to
be adrift, making things up as he goes along. Also, like Prince,
I believe it is a mistake to assume Williams—or Tonéx—has some
master plan and is firmly in control. It took me several turns
with Prince to arrive at the conclusion that, talented as he is,
he’s just a guy. A very talented guy, but he’s no strategic
genius and not all of his puzzle pieces actually fit together
and add up to anything. As tempting as it is to apply that same
thinking to Williams, I’m fairly well satisfied now that, like
Prince, he’s just out there winging it. That he enjoys keeping
people guessing, and that his artistic mood swings often outpace
solid career planning or even artistic storytelling that creates
a whole out of many parts. Like Prince, not all the Tonéx puzzle
pieces fit, and we are left gasping, wondering how to interpret
his latest mystery.
Gay rumors have swirled around Tonéx (if not Williams, the two
being at times starkly different personalities) for years, but
they seemed to have little if any effect on his exploding music
career, which reached its zenith with the brilliant Out The Box.
Out The Box debuted at #1 on the Billboard magazine Top
Gospel Album Chart in September 2004, appeared on Billboard’s
Top 200 and Top R&B Chart, was #5 on the Contemporary Christian
Chart, and to date has sold over 500,000 copies. He also netted
a Grammy nomination for Best Soul Gospel Album the following
year, and had another bonafide Christian radio hit with the
ballad "Make Me Over". In 2005, Tonéx won a total of six Stellar
Awards including "Artist of the Year" for Out The Box.
[Wikipedia]
In interviews Williams admitted to running way over budget with
Box, spending an inordinate amount of money on the live show,
post production and promotion. He then accused Verity, part of
the Zomba Label Group, of improper business practices, claiming
he and his wife were struggling with rent and had no furniture
while Box was going triple Gold. Like Prince, Williams fell
out with his record label at the height of his fame, Zomba suing
him for $1 million, which led to a period of self-exile where he
made limited commercial releases containing mainly pre-released
material not owned or controlled by Zomba. Most notable of those
releases
was 2006’s brilliant Oak Park 92105, which I consider to be
Tonéx’s masterpiece moment, his Songs In The Key Of Life. Oak
Park has the distinction (or perhaps the notoriety) of being the
first Christian-based album to be released with a Parental
Advisory label, which caused many Christian bookstores to not
carry the CD. This may have been Williams’ reason for including
the warring label (although, seriously, who knows), as Park
contained no foul language whatsoever and would have left urban
kids, attracted to the CD by the warning label, wondering what
all the fuss was about. Williams said in interviews the
warning label was not about language but theme, as Oak Park
dealt with a variety of troubling issues. I believe these very
issues and how Tonéx approached them in this work are what made
Oak Park perhaps the most significant artistic moment of his career, a work
that needed then and needs now to be in the hands of every
at-risk urban street kid we can find.
I believe Pastor Williams could teach an entire college
course based on Oak Park, which was less accessible than Out The Box
but infinitely richer and sharper-focused: a semi-biographical
urban opera that revealed shades of deeply disturbing life
moments. Was Oak Park literally about Williams’ upbringing? It’s
Tonéx. You’ll drive yourself insane trying to peel back the
onion layers. But Oak Park was likely the finest urban gospel
recording ever made, one that requires some effort on the part
of he listener to fully appreciate and parse together, but well
worth that effort.
Beyond Oak Park, Tonéx released, seemingly at random, pretty
much whatever he had lying around. There seemed to be no rhyme
or reason, no roadmap for fans to follow as he flooded his
website, his online store, iTunes and everywhere else with all
manner of stuff from his vaults. In sum, these works added up
only to a question mark, and the spiritual component of Tonéx’s
artistry seemed to dwindle even as his music became more
progressive.
Williams reportedly reached an agreement with Zomba in 2007 and
readied Stereotype: Steel & Velvet, for release, an album Tonéx
called, “My Thriller.” This may have been simple hype, but
Williams seemed happy and excited and energized about the
double-disc release, building enormous expectation among his
fans that this project would surpass even Oak Park creatively
and Out The Box commercially. Finally, Tonéx was back, and many
of us waited in great anticipation for Stereotype.
However, for reasons we may never understand (who understands
much about why Tonéx does what Tonéx does), in the months
preceding Stereotype’s release, Tonéx released another
independent project, The Naked Truth, featuring a homoerotic CD
cover and containing an expletive-ridden title track apparently
attacking Zomba. It was around that same time that Williams came
out as a bisexual. Had he done one or the other, Zomba might
have been able to weather the event, but the combination of the
cussing, attacking the hand that feeds him and coming out as at
least partially or conditionally gay had an expected affect:
Zomba shelved Stereotype. Williams went on to defend his choices
in a spur of interviews, but even his most ardent fans were left
scratching their heads about what might be next.
Taking him at his word, calling Williams (or Tonéx, not entirely
sure which one came out) gay is likely oversimplifying a complex
human experience. Expurgating him from the church (or at least
from our iPods) would be an ironic overreaction considering how
seemingly intolerant Tonéx came across as he ruined his
brilliant and moving “Make Me Over” with narrow-minded
Apostolicism in the song’s coda, Tonéx essentially claiming
Christians who’ve never spoken in tongues are not born again. I
presume the choice to release The Naked Truth with the cussing
and homoerotica had some creative merit and/or made some
artistic point, but rather than clarify these issues for a
primarily African American Christian body predisposed to
approach human sexuality with a 1960’s mindset, Tonéx clouded
the issue and stigmatized whatever journey he was on by becoming
disturbingly less overtly spiritual as he became disturbingly
more androgynous. The message seemed to be one the LGBT
community has more or less exclusively heard from the church,
that a choice must be made between sexuality and spirituality, as if the
two were mutually exclusive. Prince’s efforts to combine the two
were often shocking and naïve at the same time, but Tonéx’s
work—at least, the last I paid much attention to it—seemed to
drain the pool of the raw conviction and, yes, spiritual
conservatism that provided credible ballast for even his
most outlandish work: work we received as a challenge to parse rather
than an abdication of faith because Tonéx’s values were consistent. It’s
possible they still are, but those values seem less obvious in
his new discovery and, for many of us, it is the dearth of
spiritual content, not necessarily his emergent sexuality, that
moves us away from his music. These choices also, sadly, confirm
the head-in-sand thinking of Christian conservatives who can
hold up Tonéx’s work as a prime example of homosexuality being
incompatible with the Christian experience. The more Williams’
focus shifts to sexuality, the farther he seemingly moves from
the cross.
There have been and continue to be Gospel artists
we either
suspect are gay or know for a fact are gay. It is possible the
Gospel music industry, as we know it, would not exist were it
not for LGBT persons. Like the black church, the Gospel music
industry seems to operate under rules of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,
wherein persons we know, for a fact, are gay are accepted just
so long as they never actually publicly admit it. We just go on
pretending to see what we want to see while encouraging these
persons to live a lie. In this view, Tonéx’s train wreck of
artistic and personal choices comes across as a bit brave, but
ultimately may be self-destructive. The black church is
virtually sustained by women and gay men, while denying both.
Women do virtually everything but have authority, real
authority, over virtually nothing. And black males who admit to
being gay (as opposed to being suspected of it) are expurgated
as a matter of course, even though we’ve known, all along, for
decades, who these men were. For the black church, every year is
1965, with obviously gay men marrying women and struggling
within those unions in an effort to find acceptance. Lesbianism
flies a bit lower under the radar as unmarried women tend to
escape the scrutiny unmarried men undergo.
Tonéx’s flight plan seemed to be back to the independent label
route, carving out a new row (hence his label, “Nureau Ink”) in
the CD bins among the digital underground. I’d hoped to
interview Pastor Williams and follow up on my 2006 essay, “Tonéx
vs. Everybody,” and perhaps that opportunity will eventually
present itself. I don’t hold out much hope that sitting
with the man will assemble all the puzzle pieces. Enigma is what
ultimately fuels Williams’ creativity. If he laid everything out
on the table, what fun would that be?
Tonéx’s Wikipedia entry reports the following:
On December 29, 2009 Tonéx’s website, as well as his Twitter and
Facebook accounts, reported that the artist's mother, Evangelist
and vocalist E.B. Williams, had died the day before.
On June 9, 2010, TON3X™ released what would be his final mixtape,
the iTunes™ only release "The Parking Lot". The mixtape was also
distributed in NYC that night after what would be his final
performance. On June 15, 2010, the brand TON3X™ was officially
retired.
Williams’ B. Slade work appears to be, for the most part,
1999-esque Prince ne George Clinton secular party music with
bisexual overtones and an overemphasis on apparently casual sex.
Slade seems to have wholly abandoned Tonéx's ministry even as
(so far as we know) Williams continues to pastor his father’s
San Diego church. In this newest evolution, Williams has
completely abandoned me in the tall grass, leaving me scratching
my head wondering if Williams has lost his faith, his mind or
both. Diesel, Slade's new release, sounds provocatively old school and works to get
the toes tapping, but the lyrical content—while fun—is too
sexually charged for my personal taste and the work overall
lacks the spiritual consistency of Tonéx’s even most outrageous
tracks. In his move toward the secular, Williams has become what
Tonéx never could: ordinary.
Christopher J. Priest
24 July 2011
editor@praisenet.org
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