The Voices in My Head (And Probably Yours Too)! Cree Summer
- BradBeGodlike
- Apr 19, 2017
- 5 min read
Peace y'all, I know it's been awhile since I put out some content so I'm back with some subject matter that is familiar to all of us in one way or another whether you know it or not.
Me being born in 1989 and thus living through what most people in my generation see as the greatest in recent history, I am a 90's kid.
The 90's were indeed a great time, awesome music was being produced, there were live action TV shows that showed kids and teenagers doing awesome things that we all imitated but the 90's was known heavily for producing amazing cartoons and animation.
During this period of my life I grew to love shows like Rugrats, The Wild Thornberries, Rocket Power, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack.
These are just a few of the greats given to us back in the 90's and to go along with these great cartoons there have to be voices for these supremely memorable characters, people who dedicate their lives to breath life into these voices we used to huddle around the TV to hear everyday.
In this first episode of Voices in my Head we are going to focus on one of my favorite voices actors and beautiful sista who's been in the game for a long time to boot, Cree Summer!!! (Note I will be going over her roles that I am personally familiar with, for me to go over each and every role would be absurd as she's been working for longer than I've been alive, but I hope these credits will introduce you to series you've never been exposed to).
Cree Summer is a veteran voice actress who's been active since 1983 having done live acting on shows such as A Different World (The Cosby Show spin off series), The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Living Single which were all iconic black 90's sitcoms close to my heart and others, but my passion for Ms. Summer's work comes from her voice acting rolls with the first that I can specifically remember being Susie Carmichael from The Rugrats.
Susie Carmichael (Rugrats)
Susie was the token black kid in the Rugrats group but she was great. If you watched The Rugrats growing up, you'd know that she was the foil to Angelica the one character who would antagonize the babies and talk down to them.
Susie was good natured, loved helping the babies and most of all protect them from Angelica and her evil ways when she was around.
Angelica knew not to step to Susie for good reason, Susie was a strong black character in a television series geared towards young children and is the main reason why she still resonates with me even as a grown man.
Cree brought sass and grace to the character, Susie will stick with me always, hopefully to show my children down the line.
Here is a video showing Susie's personality in comparison to Angelica's.
Foxxy Love (Drawn Together)
One of Cree's most memorable roles I remember is drastically different from Susie and much more mature.
If you watched Comedy Central back when Chappelle Show was live you've probably caught an episode of Drawn Together, a satirized play on the reality shows that were just getting their start at the time.
Drawn Together featured parodies of characters such as Spongebob, gay Link from Legend of Zelda and a crazy Disney princess but the one character that resonated with me the most was Foxxy Love!
Foxxy Love was a parody of Valerie the black tamborine player of Josie and the Pussycats and was played to the tee……..to a point.
Foxxy was a hilarious character and the only black character in the animated reality show house, I don’t remember a huge amount about her character because the last time I watched it was about 10 years ago but here’s a montage!!!
Cree also voiced Penny from the Inspector Gadget cartoon which she was more or less the main character because Gadget was a damn fool, matter of fact how did he become an Inspector in the first place? Was his real name Gadget before his terrible accident that made him a cyborg? How could Penny’s parents leave their daughter in the care of this incompetent cyborg man?
Bet y’all never thought about that huh? Lol
Penny (Inspector Gadget)
I was looking for a montage of Penny from the show but this clip is from the Nostalgia Critic’s Christmas review of the series on Youtube. If you’re prepared to hear one of your childhood voice actresses curse, have fun!! Lol
Princess Kida (Atlantis:The Lost Empire)
Kida was bae when I was younger, I loved this movie and still do, it’s probably my favorite Disney movie because of the diverse cast and most of all Cookie uttering the most South inspired line I have ever heard in a cartoon and it has stuck with me/is still uttered by me to this day.
Cookie was voiced by the late Jim Varney of Earnest fame and voice of the Slinky Dog among many other animated characters.
She embodied a strong female character but then she got John Smith’d because you can’t have a strong woman of color(Pocahontas) be great without inserting a white dude to validate her existence. lol
Numbuh 5 (Codename:Kids Next Door)
Numbah 5 was not to be messed with, much like Susie and a lot of Cree’s other characters, she was spunky and got the job done while not to be trifled with.
If you watched the show you’d know how bad all of the K.N.D operatives were but here’s a short bumper from the hayday of Cartoon Network, I didn’t want to post a full episode.
Cleo (Clifford the big Red Dog)
Cleo was one of Clifford’s best friends and she was also voiced by Cree, I watched Clifford every now and again, it was pretty cool for the time.
Yzma (Emperor’s New School)
And last but not least Yzma the ex adviser to Emperor Kuzko’s kingdom.Originally Yzma was voiced by the late Eartha Kitt which made me fall in love with her and research her more when I grew older and appreciated her work.
Cree took over voice over duties for the character after Mama Kitt passed on and she did a great job continuing the characters quirks, while not 1 to 1 sounding exactly like Eartha, it’s good none the less.
Well fam this was a little insight into a craft I love and this will be a series from me. I love voice acting and one day I will be fortunate enough to break into the field.
Let me know what you think, look up some of the shows on YouTube, you can find so many things.
Give me feedback, peace!!!
BradBeGodlike is an avid gamer, student of film and generally funny dude who just started writing articles for FiendFix in 2017.
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