At the same time, she was scheduled to perform “Mandinka,” at the ceremony. Her late-night appearance on Letterman aside, this would be her first exposure on primetime US network TV. There would be tens of millions of people watching, a chance for her to make her mark without any of the awkwardness she experienced in her interviews, without having to slog through dumb questions about her haircut or her days as a kiss-o-gram girl.
Had she been careerist, O’Connor could have played it safe that night, lip-syncing her way through her song and ending with a gracious smile and a bow. Instead, she used her appearance to call attention to inequities in the industry. As a fuck-you to the label heads, O’Connor wore her son Jake’s sleep suit tied behind her waist—a subtle gesture that audiences might have missed. But they could not miss that she performed with an enormous gold Public Enemy logo shaved into the side of her close-cropped hair, a symbol of her solidarity with rap artists who had been erased from the program.
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