Rai Renea

In 2000, thanks to the title of her platinum-selling album, people were asking, Who Is Jill Scott? Well, this year they'll be asking, "Who is Renea L. Moss?" This Miami native is a well-known veteran in local spoken-word circles. Her sophomore CD release, Love Costs, is all about smoothed-out, hip-hop-influenced spoken word for grown folks, and she just dropped the first single from her album, a track called "Ghetto Exodus." Now she's setting out on a fifteen-city tour to promote her debut book, a slamming collection titled In Your Face. Moss will bless the mike tonight at 8:00 at The District Restaurant and Lounge, 35 NE 40th St., Miami. Call 305-576-7242, or visit www.thedistrictmiami.com. Learn more about this poet on the rise at www.reneasworld.com. - Miami New Times

Renea Moss, the Slam Queen of Miami, promptly told the audience “if your offended then maybe you should be,” as she recited her poem, “I Shall Not Be Broken.” Moss’ blunt story- telling rhymes, Moss made the audience laugh, sigh and go through andarray of emotions.

- The Spokesman (Morgan State University)

When Renea L. Moss took the microphone during Mello Mondays, the District's weekly spoken-word event, there were few men in the room.

The Miami Heat were playing the Detroit Pistons in the NBA's Eastern Conference finals. The place was mostly filled with groups of smartly dressed young black women (which is not necessarily a bad thing), many of whom were sitting at dining tables and booths. They began ordering food shortly before the evening's host, Ingrid B., walked up to a microphone in the middle of an encirclement of couches and began the program; and they were eating as a series of poets, both heralded and unheralded, took advantage of the open mike. (Ingrid referred to the aspiring bards as "virgins.") Darryl Supreme performed an angry piece condemning the sexual predator accused of murdering rural Florida girl Jessica Lunsford this past February. Asia, whom Ingrid noted is a member of the Miami Masters slam team, recited a political poem about poverty in America, among other things.

So everyone was well-fed and ready for Moss, the featured poet of the night. She began with "Look into My Eyes," the first piece on her self-released CD, Love Costs. As she recited its lines, DJ Touchtone cued up the instrumental, a moody, ominous beat produced by Black Violin.

"But when I look into your eyes, I see past the smiles and realize you're hurting inside," she said, "Covering your cries with lies/By masking the base of the pain that has etched itself on the outside of your face/By using the base of makeup foundation to cover the evidence on your skin/But no matter how hard you try to hide your face/Your soul still shows."

Sensing her audience was beginning to wander, she called out, "I know the Heat game is on, but I hope we can turn the heat up a little bit." So she addressed everyone's favorite topic: sex. "I just wanna fuck," she announced, sending everyone into dithers and snickers. The ensuing piece was scandalously raunchy; at one point she promised her lover she would give him a blowjob so sweet the next girl would taste her spit. That really got everyone going. "Man, can I get her number?" remarked one young man to his friends.

On the surface, Mello Mondays reflect all the stereotypes of the spoken-word scene: full of earnestness and dedicated to the vagaries of male-female relationships, not heady "Howl"-like (or even "Black Art"-like) broken verse poetry. But Moss says it's not all about Love Jones (to reference the 1997 Larenz Tate vehicle which, like Reality Bites or Coyote Ugly, still holds sway as a generational marker). She says the venues in Miami are all different, and the District usually draws a "laid-back kind of crowd." "But I've been to venues in West Palm Beach where it's so pro-political, I would have never done [the sex poem] there, because they would have looked at me like, öWhat's going on? Spoken-word is about movement; it's not about that.'" So she'll drop a piece like "Ghetto Exodus," her version of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," or "Rise, America, Rise."

A divorced working mother with a two-year-old son, the 32-year-old Moss has been performing poetry since 1999. "I love making people think, and I love to write," she says. In the pop lexicon, her sphere is marked by Def Poetry Jam on HBO and wordsmiths such as Saul Williams and Jill Scott. Moss says she likes Scott, but also cites Sekou tha Misfit, Kirk Nugent, Helena D. Lewis, and Dwayne Morgan among her favorite poets. All of them are well-known entities within the spoken world; their relative anonymity outside it denotes how that scene is still something of a subculture.

Spoken-word hasn't produced many pop personalities, but it's extremely popular. In Miami, weekly events such as the Funk Jazz Lounge (which recently went on hiatus) and Mello Mondays draw a dedicated audience numbering in the hundreds. But Moss is ambitious. She commands up to a few hundred dollars for a fifteen-minute to half-hour set. She opened for Digable Planets during their March concert at I/O Lounge, recently finished a short tour through Georgia and Florida, and is actively campaigning to have a spoken-word category added to the Grammy Awards.

"There are maybe two percent [of us] that have broken over to the commercial side of spoken-word, as far as you hear them on TV, doing commercials and this and that," says Moss. "But I think sometimes, because of the way we market ourselves, that's why a lot of people haven't heard of us.

"I'm trying to cater to that market that will love it, but they just haven't been exposed to it," she continues. "I think there's so many talented individuals down here that could be doing so much more."


- Miami New Times

"Take Erykah Badu's words and Jill Scott's presence and you have Renea L. Moss" - Funk Jazz Lounge, Demas, Radio Personality WHQT HOT 105

"Her prose penetrates and her passion heals." - Bruce George, Executive Producer, Def Poetry Jam

"Renea Moss edutains: educates and entertains." - Barnes and Nobles, Aventura, Public Relations

Spoken word is definitely where its at. In my opinion Rai is the long lost member of Floetry. As soon as I heard one track from her I said to myself, "Floetry definitely needs a 3rd member and Rai should be that one. She started out just as a poet then revolved to spoken word. She now takes her music all over the globe. Her first poem was written at the age of 5 and has studied performing arts for most of her life. Her music will definitely make you bob your head every time you hear it. Rai has 2 albums already and I don't know it but she is problably in the studio right now paving the way for her 3rd album. This is a very talented and deep sister and I believe that you will be seeing Rai hit the main stage in a short amount of time. Look Rai up on her myspace at www.myspace.com/raisplace. Trust me you won't be disapppointed when you hear this amazing and talend artist. - Austin "Mr. Bugz" Jeter, Urban Mainstream