By Karu F. Daniels, AOL Black Voices
Whoever said a little bit penis doesn't go a long way, they should talk to Katreese Barnes.
Would you believe that person behind Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg's wildly popular 'D*ck in a Box' skit is a beautiful and talented black woman?
Well, it's true.
After working with some of the biggest names in the music business, the 'Saturday Night Live' musical director shares in winning an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Music & Lyrics" -- along with fellow composers Jorma and Asa Taccone, Timberlake, and writers Akiva Schaffer and Andy Samberg -- for the SNL Digital Short turned internet sensation.
The skit took the home the gold at last weekend's Creative Arts Emmy Awards.
Barnes, the first female African American musical director in the history of the Lorne Michaels-helmed legendary variety show, has been making her mark as a talented musician, songwriter and producer for many years.
Some factoids about Miss Barnes below:
-- She grew up in a musical family and learned to play the guitar, drums, flute, and piano at an early age.
-- Before landing her prestigious gig at 'Saturday Night Live,' she was a former member of the R&B duo J.U.I.C.Y (Joint United Incredible Creative Youth).
-- She co-wrote the song, 'Sugar Free' which was later sampled on rapper AZ's 1995 hit 'Sugar Hill' featuring Miss Jones.
-- Her music career took a different direction when she was tapped by legendary singer Roberta Flack to work on her 1994 album 'Roberta.'
-- Barnes later worked with Chaka Khan on her Grammy Award-winning album 'Woman I Am.' And then with Sting, Luther Vandross, Carly Simon, P.Diddy, and Billy Joel in various capacities.
-- Working as an accomplished musician, Barnes caught the attention of 'SNL' brass in 2000 and an opportunity arose as piano player for the famed variety show.
With her Emmy Award win, she plans on spreading her wings even more with a musical theater show 'Rocketman,' which pays homage to Elton John. On Oct. 22, the show will debut at New York City's Triad Theater, playing quarterly.
She's also gearing up to score her first feature film, 'Plots and Plans and Schemes and Dreams,' with former 'SNL' writer Rich Talarico.
VIDEO: Justin Timberlake -- 'D*ck in a Box' (NBC's Uncensored Version)


Comments: (22)
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By: Cat21299 on 9/13/2007 10:36PM
I will say when I saw this on SNL.I was hollering.Very Funny.
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By: Themthereeyez on 9/14/2007 9:34AM
I really wish BV would get OFF this white boy's nuts ... he is not an R&B star and he is not checking for negroes unless he can use them. Enough already! This bastard is proof that is must be a picnic in the park being a white man in America.
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By: Natalia on 9/14/2007 10:35AM
Wow that was hilarious. Visit http://executees.net
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By: Josh on 9/14/2007 11:28AM
Although blacks are 12% of the population in reality it is just 2% of the blacks that commit 50% of the murders and a greater percentage of other crimes. Consider: black females - 6%. Blacks from zero yrs. to 12 yrs. and black males from 50-100 years commit an infinitesimal percentage of the crimes. Therefore we are left with two percent. If we eliminate crimes committed by this two percent from the U.S. statistics our country compares very favorably with all Western countries. Fact -- blacks kill 7 times more than whites kill. Fact -- blacks kill whites 20 times more than whites kill blacks. Fact -- blacks mug or commit group crime against whites 50 times more than whites commit against blacks. Fact -- blacks rape white women 2000 (yes 2000) times more than whites rape black women. In New York City, about 300 white women are raped by blacks every year BUT there has not been a black woman raped by a white male in anybody’s memory (going back over 20 yrs.) Consider: Al Sharpton had to go upstate New York to find a hoax and that was almost 20 years ago. (Source NYT 4/22/05)
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 2004 report (released May 2006), blacks commit 54 percent of the homicides in America even though they constitute only 12 percent of the population.
An individual black male is eight times more likely to commit murder than an individual white male. It so happens that black felons commit 43 percent of aggravated assaults, 66 percent of armed robberies, 27 percent of rapes and 85 percent of interracial crimes of violence, mainly against whites (this last figure from a Justice Department report 2003). However, it's not just in the United States. The greatest dicators in recent years have emerged in Africa. People like Idi Amin of Uganda, Hastings Kamuzu Banda in Malawi, Mobutu Sese Seko, in Zaire, self-anointed Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic, Mohammed Saidi Barre in Somalia, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe -- the list is endless.
Blacks are dumber as well, statistics analyzed by the New York Times (July 4, 1999) dispel the poverty argument by establishing that impoverished white children whose parents earn less than $10,000 a year score higher on standardized SAT tests than black children whose parents earn more than $70,000 a year. Also, nearly 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock.
The fact of the matter is White people have made the greatest contributions to the world. We have Thomas Hobbes, Niels Bohr, Peter the Great, Guglielmo Marconi, James Joyce, Vasco De Gama, Jonas Salk, Enrico Caruso, Charlie Chaplin, Louis Daguerre, J. Robert Oppenbeimer, Gregg Pincus, Enrico Fermi, William Harvey, Ben Franklin, Picasso, Werner Heisenberg, FDR, Magellen, Kant, Walt Disney, D.W Griffith, Jean-Luc Godard, Winston Churchill, Ed Jenner, Charles Babbage, Alexander Graham Bell, Mendel, Bill Gates, The Wright Brothers, Dante, Francis Bacon, Voltaire, Alexander Fleming, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Rene Descartes, Watson & Crick, Beethoven, Henry Ford, Bach, Mozart, Issac Newton, Charles Darwin, Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, Galileo, Karl Marx, Gutenberg, Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, Freud, Edison, The Beatles, etc. We are the greatest people who ever lived, and who continue to this day, to contribute greatly to society and lead the world in the fields of science, medicine, and engineering. Don't feel bad, you people have Mike Tyson, Dolamite, Ike Turner, and Snoop Dog.
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By: Kourtney on 9/14/2007 11:49AM
OMG i wish people who WROTE comments on black voices would get off of Justin's nuts. He is talented, black and white is not an issue.. this article isnt even about justin, its about the first black woman to work for SNL. Yes, Justin was on the song (that 25 million people watched on youtube) but Katreese Barnes helped with the song as well. Stop hatin people. Justin is a good artist, and i bet u thought dick in a box was the shit when u first heard it. u cant help but laugh about that shit, it was funny. Talk about Katreese, give her a round of applause for making it in a white man's world.
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By: TellingItLikeItIs on 9/14/2007 2:11PM
TO #4 JOSH THIS IS FOR YOU:
http://johnmpinto.com/blackpride.html
This is a story about a group of people who were fed up with African Americans, so they joined together
and decided to wish us away.
After wishing so hard, they found themselves in a sort of twilight zone where there was an America without black people.
At first these "visionaries" breathed a sigh of relief.
At last, they say, no more crime, drugs, violence and welfare.
All the blacks have gone!! It makes you wonder...
Where would America be without us?
There would be very few crops that would have flourished because
the nation was built on a slave-supported system.
There are no cities with tall skyscrapers because
Alexander Miles, a black man, invented the elevator,
and without it one finds great difficulty reaching high floors.
There are few if any cars because Richard Spikes, a black man,
invented the automatic gear shift,
Joseph Gammel, also black, invented the supercharge system for internal combustion engines,
and Garret A. Morgan invented the traffic signals.
Furthermore, one could not use the rapid transit system because its precursor was the electric trolley,
which was invented by another black man, Elbert R. Robinson.
Even if there were streets on which cars and a rapid transit system could operate,
they were cluttered with paper because an African American,
Charles Brooks, invented the street sweeper.
There were few if any newspapers, magazines and books because
John Love invented the pencil sharpener, William Purvis invented the fountain pen,
Lee Burridge invented the type writing machine and W A. Lovette invented the advanced printing press.
They were all black.
Even if Americans could write their letters, articles and books,
they would not have been transported by mail because
William Barry invented the postmarking and canceling machine,
William Purvis invented the handstamp and Philip Downin invented the letter drop.
The lawns were brown and wilted because Joseph Smith invented the lawn sprinkler
and John Burr the lawn mower.
When they entered their homes, they found them to be poorly ventilated and heated.
You see, Frederick Jones invented the air conditioner and Alice Parker the heating furnace.
Their homes were also filthy because Thomas W. Stewart invented the mop and Lloyd P. Ray the dust pan.
Their children met them at the door barefooted, shabby, motley and unkempt.
But what could one expect, Jan E. Matzelinger invented the shoe lasting machine,
Walter Sammons invented the comb, Lydia O. Newman invented the brush,
Sarah Boone invented the ironing board and George T. Samon invented the clothes dryer.
Finally, they were resigned to at least have dinner amidst all of this turmoil.
But here again, the food had spoiled because another black man,
John Standard invented the refrigerator.
No light to eat their spoiled meal
because the filament within the light bulb was invented by a black man.
Now we've quickly learned more about what it would be like
if there were no black people in the world,
especially if we were ever sick and needed blood.
Dr. Charles Drew, a black scientist, found a way to preserve and store blood,
which led to his starting the world's first blood bank.
Well, what if a family member had to have heart surgery?
This would not have been possible without Dr. Daniel Hale Williams,
a black doctor, who performed the first open-heart surgery.
And lastly, A Father of the Internet "Philip Emeagwali, a computer scientist,
is one of the fathers of the Internet and a trailblazer in petroleum extraction," reports CNN.
In his 1970 essay, "What America Would Be Like Without Blacks," Ralph Ellison argued that "Whatever else the true American is, he is also somehow Black."
#4 Josh be very, very careful of what you state in a comment. You have statistics but those statistics do not account for a majority of us who are NOT in jail, uneducated or having babies out of wedlock.
WE will soon be the MAJORITY and NOT the minority.
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By: TellingItLikeItIs on 9/14/2007 2:33PM
OH AND JOSH DON'T FORGET!!! YOU CAUCASIANS HAVE YOUR: Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Nick Nolte, President Bush, Karl Rove, and Anna Nicole Smith (they had to test 3 men to find out who HER baby's daddy was! LOL)
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By: LORRAINE on 9/14/2007 7:38PM
I LOVED THE SKIT, GOOD FOR YOU KATREESE, KEEP THE GREAT WORK COMING.
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By: JOE on 9/14/2007 8:12PM
Josh gave us a long list of white people, but was unable to attribute any accomplishments to any of them. I am only familiar with half of the names on the list but I hope that they all did something good. Beethoven was of African descent and the Beatles got their start covering R&B songs and like most rockers would freely admit that they owe a great debt to African American musicians. I am grateful that Telling it like it is was not only was able to list some accomplishments, but he attributed some to wome as well. Aren't we supposed to be celebrating the accomplishments of an African American woman? How about it, Josh? Have white women accomplished anything?
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By: Q on 9/15/2007 12:52AM
White people have accomplished a lot too. Lets give them a round of applause:Susan Smith; murdered her kids for a man, and blamed a black man, Jeffrey Dahmer; cannibalized
numerous people, Charles Stewart; shot and killed his pregnant wife and unborn baby and blamed a black man, Andrea Yates; murdered her 5 children, Pamela Smart; convinced her high school boy toy to murder her husband for insurance money, Charles Manson; convinced hippies to commit numerous murders, then suicide, Monica Lewinsky; gave President blow job under the desk,Female astronaut who drove across country in a diaper to kill rival, because both were messing with a married man, Enron Execs, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Tyco Exec, Viacom;need I go on? I think you get the picture here, Josh. Maybe you don't because you have nothing better to do than troll around black themed blogs to spew venom and hatred. You must be your families pride and joy.
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