Wednesday, September 6 2006
Rock Steady Revelations
How far from traditional Bronx breaking can one go before hiphop dance is no longer quite hiphop dance?
Wednesday, April 19 2006
Batman, Africans, and the Pope’s Superheroics
Bandes Dessinées (BDs, or drawn strips, bound in hardcover 'albums'), a Franco-Belgian cross between comics and graphic novels, are crazily popular in Paris.
Monday, March 20 2006
College Dropout Studies Abroad
Kanye West's 'Touch the Sky' French leg of the tour stirs up a hiphop history lesson.
Thursday, January 26 2006
Public Figure Him Figurehead
A visual hiphop artist, Basquiat rolled hiphop style by liberally sampling African-American icons, comic book superheroes, and cultural totems at will.
Thursday, January 5 2006
No Replastering… The Structure Is Rotten
In the wake of the recent rioting that began in Paris, the 'good face' mask of France's social policy toward migration, race, religion, and economic policy, is left in smoldering ruins.
Wednesday, November 23 2005
Hiphop Négritude
The death of Radikal and other French hiphop magazines, due in no small part to the encroachment of 'French version' American publications, makes the possibilities of a new millennium négritude seem unlikely.
Thursday, September 22 2005
Africa Talks to You
To thrive in a new country, immigrants must cultivate a degree of economic insularity. As a woman from Senegal tells, Paris' Little Africa is no exception.
Tuesday, August 2 2005
The Complexities of American Exile
For Lewis, the ties that bind are simultaneously knotted, loose, and frayed.
Thursday, June 30 2005
Strollin’
Lewis serves as your guide on this pleasant historical walking tour of black Paris.
Tuesday, May 24 2005
The Joy of Sax, Part I
In France, a beloved musician needn't be 'successful', in the how-many-CDs-can-he-sell sense, to be vraiment réussi.
Wednesday, April 27 2005
Summits, Disciples, and the Love Below
Promise led Lewis to Paris; the tantalizing promise of experiencing the first ever Hip-Hop World Summit and yes, the promise of love.
Wednesday, March 23 2005
Why Paris?
Lewis surveys the modern cosmopolitan black community in the French capital, and celebrates the influence of black culture on Parisian life. It's a different world, now, than lived by his predecessors of the '30s Negritude movement, quite post-soul from the flight in the '50s: it's a Parisian hiphop life.
