Features
Friday, January 22 2010
Teddy Pendergrass: Life Was a Song Worth Singing
Pendergrass' popularity lie in his performance of a masculinity that was virile and tailor-made for a cultural discourse in the '70s that had moved beyond the struggles for civil rights.
Friday, July 24 2009
The Demise of Vibe Magazine and the Future of Criticism
With diminishing places for thoughtful criticism, black cultural critics exist as little more than commentators on the Obama White House. Blackness has been reduced to a news cycle.
Wednesday, May 20 2009
Should Black Radio Die?
The idea of black radio has long been dead as companies like Clear Channel and Emmis have mined the field for “authentic” black on-air talent, while having little to do with the communities they exist to serve.
Monday, July 23 2007
Carrying the Water: On Michael Eric Dyson
It is Dyson’s ability to make himself and his work accessible to lay audiences -- ironically much like grassroots activists -- that makes him a target for those folk within the academy and elsewhere, who don’t believe that his work is rigorous enough.
Tuesday, January 2 2007
The Last Soul Brother: James Brown (1933-2006)
The humanity of the man -- with its funky and messy flaws and frailties -- could never sustain the myth, so much so that the image of the man who gave Black Power its soundtrack became a harsh reminder of its fractured legacy.
Columns
Thursday, May 1 2003
Tupac's Book Shelf
Price drew on his own training as a Gospel musician and ethnomusicologist to examine Tupac's spiritual development, suggesting that the late artist had surpassed the legacies of John Coltrane and Mahalia Jackson as spiritual figures within the tradition of black music.
Thursday, March 27 2003
Confessions of a ThugNiggaIntellectual
I share a space with them each time I'm profiled in grocery stores, or chillin' with my homies Gramsci and Jay Z at Starbucks.
Wednesday, February 26 2003
Still a Riot Goin' On: Fela Kuti, Celebrity Gramscians, and the AIDs Crisis in Africa
Fela's emergence fits the profile of what has come to be known as the Gramscian or organic intellectual.
Tuesday, December 17 2002
White Chocolate
In the past, it has been all too easy to identify many of these white artists under the rubric of 'blue-eyed soul'. But I'd like to argue for a separate category known as 'white chocolate' -- that which 'looks' different but contains all the flavor and the texture of the original.
Wednesday, October 30 2002
Still Love H.E.R.
. . . I've come across more than a few hip-hop generation artists and intellectuals who are beginning to show strains of gray in their locks, twists, beards, and fades.
Reviews
Tuesday, May 31 2005
Common: Be
Electric Circus pushed the boundaries of hip-hop -- a psychedelic trip to hip-hop's great beyond -- Be just finds a world-wide Common back home standing on the corner. But you can't go home again and no matter how much he wishes, the Common of Can I Borrow a Dollar? is not the same Common of Be -- and thank God for that.
Friday, February 4 2005
John Legend: Get Lifted
Legend has fashioned a rather nuanced and sophisticated debut -- a Nora Jones for the R&B faithful.
Monday, January 10 2005
Gerald Levert: Do I Speak for the World
A bold (and blatantly commercial) attempt to bring purpose to R&B -- and to bring soul music back to the world.
Thursday, November 11 2004
Queen Latifah: The Dana Owens Album
The album is a tribute to Queen Latifah's talents and her musical tastes, and a an example of what the so-called hip-hop generation can produce, when we allow them to grow up.
