One of my favorite students is in France right now and I asked her to send me some French hip-hop.
This is what she dropped on me. I wonder if the man in the video is a stand-in for Sarkozy (or a supporter at any rate)?
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This is Mafia K1 Fry. The track is called “Pour Ceux” (“For Those”). The group reminds me a lot of the Wu. Even if you can’t understand French (I can translate on the written page ok, but I can’t translate from hearing it) you should get the jist easy enough.
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Picked this up through Open Culture:
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Needless to say…this is hip-hop.
I cribbed this from Warren Ellis.
* Createspace.com: Amazon’s Print On Demand operation. Very interesting. For no money at all, you can create a book (or CD or DVD or whatever), get an Amazon Buy It Now badge for your website, and let them take care of everything else. I understand Lulu and other POD operations are very good, but this is the killer app: you get Amazon’s distribution system. This is massive.
* Why is it massive? It’s fucking AMAZON. Self-publishing turns into a one-click deal. In fact, POD on this order transcends self-pub and vanity pub to a large extent.
It re-enables the small press for the new generation. You youngsters won’t remember what it was like, looking through fringe bookstores for the odd things, the new things, the weird things — things that were small and important, which people had had to gamble real money on the production and printing of. I still have boxes and boxes of this sort of thing from the 80s….* Also, just as an aside: given that sf magazines pay$50/1000 words and don’t publish much that’s over 15000 words, a determined sf
writer could release POD books in the novellette/novella length. Or even band together and create a POD imprint inside Createspace.
What possibilities emanate from this? I can think of quite a few….
The central meme that will define Vick’s circumstance is a simple one.
He didn’t leave the hood in the hood. People make the same argument about Pacman, and used to make the same argument about AI.
But here’s the thing. While there is a set of geographical markers that distinguish Detroit/Baltimore’s East Side (or Chicago’s South Side, or Saint Louis’ North Side) from its West/North side, even within this place there’s a whole lot of stuff going on. Even within one thin demographic slice you’ve got hustlers, workers, intellectuals, artisans, etc. And even within the straight up criminal class you’ve got people who understand the value of discretion, who know how to separate the wheat from the chaff. People who might not be able to tell you how to allot your 401K, but can tell you within a minute of meeting someone whether that person is trustworthy. Can give you both strategic and tactical advice about how to negotiate a given situation with a minimal use of rhetorical/physical violence.
The question then isn’t why Vick “didn’t let the hood go.” Because the “hood” contains as many different characters and character types as any other place that we might find on a map.
One of the issues that I’m currently trying to work my way through deals with the politics of black cultural production. More specifically what happens to genres like rap, techno, house, as they move across space and time? To an extent this relates to issues of authenticity, though to be honest I don’t think that set of questions is really all that important. But what I find fascinating, among other things, is the unpredictability of consumption and circulation.
Check out the video below and see what I mean. Thanks to my man Tafari who also dropped on me the fact that on this date in 1831 black women in Boston founded the African American Female Intelligence Society.
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I’ve already linked to part of Bill Moyers’ interview with Grace Boggs. But the video expands on some of it, and emphasizes a couple of points that bear consistent repetition:1. We have to generate another way of living as we critique our current state of affairs. A cultural revolution is what is required.2. This cultural revolution will start locally as a way of PRACTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING.When I talk about a cultural revolution, I’m not necessarily suggesting we go back to the Ancients. Studying the writings of the Ancients (and here I’m going all the way back) may serve as a bridge…but it isn’t a destination. I’m suggesting that we think about the best practices of black urban life (in the case of those living in rustbelt cities like me…other cities require different models), and then figure out how to use those practices to develop a set of ethical standards, and a community-oriented approach to problem solving that is based first and foremost on work.On a related note, the PBS Program NOW will be dealing with Bob Moses and The Algebra Project. Please watch.
I’ve been reading comics now for thirty years. Two of the first websites I read everyday are Comic Book Resources and Newsarama. Rich Johnston, one of their columnists has been writing a gossip column (“Lying in the Gutters“) of sorts, probably the longest running of its kind. At the bottom of every column he’s got something called a “swipe file.”In comics vocabulary a swipe refers to the intentional or unintentional copying of a panel, cover, page (or photograph) for use in a comic. In order to save time and resources, and in some cases in order to give props where props are due, artists swipe covers, poses, panels, and photographs. Instead of creating an image of Magneto from scratch, you swipe another image and use it as the template. At its best and worst swiping is a bit like sampling.The two images above? Alex Ross was one of the first artists in the modern era to paint rather than draw superheroes, lending them the aura of myth. The picture of The Batman is his. In the text he noted that he got the idea from an old story involving Catwoman…she referred to all of the scars he had on his back.But he didn’t say where he received the artistic inspiration from.The picture to the left should be familiar to students of the enslavement. I believe it is one of the only pictures on record of its kind. Note the posture of the body in both cases. What is it that Ross is trying to convey here that caused him to use the body of a formerly enslaved African? What is missed in the translation? Both are arguably heroes, but whereas the Batman protects and defends the status quo from a position of wealth and privilege, the enslaved African comes to freedom and justice from a very different position.
Here I’m talking about Tyler Perry’s new show.
There’s a long history of “supporting our own” within black communities. One of the latest versions of this is the idea of seeing a black movie–any black movie–on the weekend it comes out. The other part of this though, is keeping our criticism quiet. Because if we open our mouth, not only could the show get cancelled, but we might not get another shot at it. Artistic racial solidarity at its best.
The folks at YBP Guide believe that people are hating on Tyler Perry and they shouldn’t, given his success and I imagine his rise from nothing.
Me? I believe it ain’t hating…unless it is.
Every subjugated group has to deal with these issues. So what the folks at YBP Guide are saying isn’t new.
But I’m on the other end of the spectrum. The only way we can improve is through careful but unrelenting critique.
I’ve been reading about Gary Sheffield’s (expanded) comments about the relative absence of African Americans in Major League Baseball. To tell you how much I know and how deep this situation is, until Sheffield made his comments I just assumed that Sheffield himself was Latino. I know that Bonds is an African American, and that Griffey is African American…but after that? My mind is a blank. (Oh. Cecil Fielder’s son Prince is African American.) The Tigers are now good enough for me to follow now, so hopefully that situation will change.But whatever the case I think that Sheffield’s comments are worth thinking about, and fleshing out. I’ve read at least one commenter who got some of it right. And another who also came close. But there’s more than a few idiots floating around. The following represents a piece I wrote over at my old haunts, with a few modifications. (more…)
