Tuesday, December 30, 2014
*Update: Cuba hip hop and the corporation that almost ruined it
"Shortly before the US and Cuba reestablished
diplomatic relations on December 2014, Associated Press exposed a
cartoonish caper by the US Agency for International Development (USAID)
(1). Apparently running out of ideas for undermining the Cuban
revolution, the agency turned to funding hip hop rappers. This bizarre
scheme, denounced by US Senator Patrick Leahy as “reckless” and
“stupid”, was contracted out to Creative Associates International Inc.
(CAII), a little known private company that happens to be one of USAID’s
largest contractors. This is the same company that earlier in 2014 had
been caught in another USAID scheme to ensnare Cuban youth, this one
involving Twitter.
CAII deserves a closer look. In the last three decades this company has popped up in the middle of major political, diplomatic, military and intelligence operations of the US government worldwide.
“Creative Associates International provides outstanding, on-the-ground development services and forges partnerships to deliver sustainable solutions to global challenges”, explains the company web site. “Its experts focus on building inclusive educational systems, transitioning communities from conflict to peace… engaging youth… and more. Creative is recognized for its ability to quickly adapt and excel in conflict and post-conflict environments.”
read rest here
CAII deserves a closer look. In the last three decades this company has popped up in the middle of major political, diplomatic, military and intelligence operations of the US government worldwide.
“Creative Associates International provides outstanding, on-the-ground development services and forges partnerships to deliver sustainable solutions to global challenges”, explains the company web site. “Its experts focus on building inclusive educational systems, transitioning communities from conflict to peace… engaging youth… and more. Creative is recognized for its ability to quickly adapt and excel in conflict and post-conflict environments.”
read rest here
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Saturday, December 27, 2014
Political Power of Hip Hop: Ferguson
"The Fix reached out to hip-hop scholar James Peterson of Lehigh
University to get a sense of what this moment means for this
now-middle-aged genre of music that has long since become something much
more than just a genre. We caught up with him while he is in Japan, on
tour for his book, "The Hip-Hop Underground and African American
Culture: Beneath the Surface."
FIX: What do you make of this moment and what it means and says about hip hop?
PETERSON: Hip-hop is my specialty, and for such a long time I’ve had to bear the brunt of criticism from people who say that it was apolitical and the hip-hop generation was apathetic and disengaged. I have known this not to be true. Hip-hop artists have been talking about police brutality since 1982. This hip-hop generation has been talking about government surveillance since the 1990s. And the hip-hop generation activism is at the forefront of this generation of activists. So people who have criticized hip-hip for being apathetic and staying on sidelines have to keep quiet now."
read the rest here
FIX: What do you make of this moment and what it means and says about hip hop?
PETERSON: Hip-hop is my specialty, and for such a long time I’ve had to bear the brunt of criticism from people who say that it was apolitical and the hip-hop generation was apathetic and disengaged. I have known this not to be true. Hip-hop artists have been talking about police brutality since 1982. This hip-hop generation has been talking about government surveillance since the 1990s. And the hip-hop generation activism is at the forefront of this generation of activists. So people who have criticized hip-hip for being apathetic and staying on sidelines have to keep quiet now."
read the rest here
Small Town Hip Hop
"When Jared Soares decided to document the hip-hop scene in Roanoke,
Virginia, he wasn’t entirely sure it existed. But he was passionate
about hip-hop music, and wanted to see if it could thrive even in a
small town mostly known for bluegrass. He also wanted to try doing a
long-term photography project for the first time.
Soares, then a photojournalist at the Roanoke Times, didn’t
have to look too far. After stepping into a corner store, he saw CDs for
sale at the counter. Most were bootleg copies of mainstream hip-hop
artists like Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy, but among them he found three
local albums, with contact information listed on the back. He started
calling: The first line was disconnected, the second played waiting
music, and the third connected him to Terrance Palmer, who designed
cover art for a lot of area artists.
“I kind of explained what I wanted to do. He said, ‘I hate talking on
the phone. Can you meet me in person?’ I said, ‘When?’ He said, ‘How
about now?’ ” Soares said."
here
here
Friday, December 26, 2014
Street Art where NYPD officers were killed
This is the street art located on the same block where two NYPD officers were killed yesterday pic.twitter.com/An7VSIASCF
— Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) December 21, 2014
Thursday, December 25, 2014
RZA speaks out on Eric Garner Case: non-value of black life
"Although Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA doesn’t have issue with all police, he
does think that some are responsible for the unfair treatment and
perception of the black community.
The rapper and music producer asserted that the Eric Garner case wasn’t solely related to racial inequality, but that it was also “about empowering a man who didn’t have power before and who overexerted his power”.
read rest here
The rapper and music producer asserted that the Eric Garner case wasn’t solely related to racial inequality, but that it was also “about empowering a man who didn’t have power before and who overexerted his power”.
read rest here
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Hip Hop: "Black" v. "Culture"
Hip Hop is "black" when crime happens. When it wins an award it's everyone's culture.
— Andreas Hale (@AndreasHale) December 22, 2014
Monday, December 22, 2014
Q-Tip to Iggy: Hip Hop is an artistic socio-political movement...
@IGGYAZALEA HipHop is a artistic and socio-political movement/culture that sprang from the disparate ghettos of NY in the early 70's
— QTip (@QtipTheAbstract) December 20, 2014
"it was about what it really means, on a socio-political level, that America's favorite rappers keep getting whiter (as exemplified by Azalea's Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album, mimicking Macklemore's success last year). Banks gave a brave, emotionally-charged Hot 97 interview earlier this week, during which she cried describing how she feared things like Azalea's Grammy nomination were contributing to the erasure of hip-hop's blackness, and blackness in general: "When they give these Grammys out, all it says to white kids is 'You're amazing, you're great, you can do anything you put your mind to,' she said. "And all it says to Black kids is 'You don't have shit, you don't own shit, not even the shit you created for yourself.' And it makes me upset." Azalea took to Twitter to respond (you can read her response here); it was flippant, wholly unempathetic, and re-defined missing the point.
Today, Q-Tip hit Azalea with a long, informed response—not as an a "chastisement" or "admonishment," he said, but simply for some context. It's worth reading for all of us. Azalea has yet to respond."
Read Q-Tip's tweets/history lesson here
Sunday, December 21, 2014
ancient vandalism
"When Pompeii was rediscovered in the eighteenth century, no one was
particularly interested in the rash of graffiti scratched on its walls.
Excavators at the time were too busy carting away bulky and aesthetically
pleasing works of art as trophies for the Bourbon kings. It was not until
the mid-nineteenth century, and the advent of “romantic” archaeology, that
one open-minded director, Francesco Maria Avellino, had the foresight to
start conserving these fragile, less prestigious relics, thousands of which
still survive, either in situ or detached with their original plaster. Other
early enthusiasts included Chateaubriand and Bishop Wordsworth, both of whom
recognized the “primitive” appeal of the insignificant-looking scrawls and
their power to safeguard the noisy, if sometimes indecorous, opinions of
Pompeii’s dramatically silenced inhabitants: the trials of school (“If
Cicero pains you, you’ll get a flogging”), the pangs of love (“Rufus loves
Cornelia”), threats (“Beware of shitting here”), electioneering (“Cuspius
for aedile”) and insults (“Narcissus is a giant cocksucker”)."
read more here
read more here
Black pop culture fuels empire?
“They tryna lock niggas up
They tryna make new slaves
See that’s that privately owned prison
Get your piece today”
– Lyric from Kanye West’s 2013 single “New Slaves.”
Popular culture in American society serves multiple functions. Viewed by many as simple artistic expression seeking to provide entertainment for its audiences, throughout American history popular culture has been deployed by the ruling elite as a means to solidify the imperatives of American capitalism and empire in the minds of the nation’s citizenry as well as the world abroad.
“President Dwight D. Eisenhower helped lead the foundations of global jazz diplomacy in the aftermath ofBrown v. Board of Education--a decision that provided impetus for a world wide United States Information Agency (UNIA) propoganda campaign.” – ”Jazz Diplomacy: Promoting America During the Cold War Era,” by Lisa E. Davenport
Black Jazz Musicians were recruited by Eisenhower and subsequent administrations to be the ambassadors to American Capitalism in third world countries that were recently gaining independence and flirting with Communism as a political and economic model at the height of global Soviet prominence. These Black musicians were being recruited at a time when America was only making slight overtures to crack the walls of Jim Crow Segregation. Yet, the recent Supreme Court Decision of Brown vs Education led some in the Black community to naively believe that a transformative victory had been won as opposed to a judicial policy choice to improve America’s image abroad in the face of Communist expansion.
“Starting in the 1950's, the U.S. State Department solicited jazz artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, and Louis Armstrong as ‘cultural ambassadors’ to third world countries and the African continent to try to ‘rehabilitate’ America's racist image and offer the American way of life as an alternative to the increasing post-colonial popularity of Communism. Armstrong was performing in the Katanga Province in the Congo the same time as Patrice Lumumba's capture and torture with American complicity. He was on the continent when Lumumba was killed.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was the brainchild behind this movement of recruiting Jazz artists for this purpose”– "In Search of the Black Fantastic," Richard Iton.
In today’s political age with the browning of America, the ruling elite understand the importance of having the pop culture/media arm of the Black mis-leadership class endorse empire in Black face. Politicians like Barack Obama and Cory Booker are crucial to ensuring that people of color embrace the empire’s agenda as their own. Celebrities ranging from Oprah Winfrey, Samuel L. Jackson, to Jay Z swear their loyalty to the Booker/Obama types in fulfillment of a ridiculous Black redemptive fantasy. Racial kinship politicsbecomes a tool of empire.
read rest here
Banksy mocks BP
"If you think this dolphin looks furious — it is — and with good reason! This colorful kiddie ride comes courtesy of gleeful art prankster Banksy, an artist well known for his graffiti and politically charged installations. In his most recent creation, the artist transformed a coin-operated ride into a searing statement against the BP oil spill. Wrapped in a real tuna net and fully oiled, this dolphin is fully operable, and ready to take you on a ride that’ll get you forgetting about all the eco-damage BP has done – and like BP, all you’ve got to do is throw some money at it."
http://inhabitat.com/banksys-coin-operated-politically-charged-plaything-mocks-bp/
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Monday, December 15, 2014
US co-opted Cuba's hip hop scene
"A covert U.S. operation to spark a democracy-spreading youth movement in Cuba by infiltrating the country’s underground hip-hop scene ended up a Looney tune.
An Associated Press investigation blew the lid off the clandestine mission by the U.S. Agency for International Development, revealing it flopped because it was ill-conceived, reckless and executed by amateurs.
Instead of spreading democracy, the mission put innocent Cubans at risk and left unwitting recruits detained and interrogated by Cuban officials."
Read the rest here
India: Guess Who
"Pictures of Guesswho's graffiti on walls and buildings in Kochi (Cochin), in Kerala state on India's southwest coast, are catching attention on the photo-sharing sites, Facebook and Reddit.
Kochi is in the midst of a huge art biennale, and Guesswho's graffiti seems to be a poke at the organised festival. The stencils are a clever mash-up of Western pop culture with Indian icons, and the artist's (or artists') style is certainly influenced by that anonymous yet famous British street artist, Banksy.
Guesswho spoke to BBC Tamil and BBC Trending: he or she wouldn't reveal their identity to us, but they did agree to answer some questions via email."
Read the rest here
Cornell to digitize Hip Hop Archive
"Aaliyah, Ace Hood, the Afros, Ali D, Arrested Development: In Bill
Adler's extensive collection of hip-hop history, some of the genre's
biggest names are arranged next to lesser mainstream artists.
Adler was the founding publicity director of Def Jam Records. One of his first assignments was getting pop music critics at daily newspapers to cover one of the label's new artists, LL Cool J. He worked at Def Jam for six years, before going independent and later running a gallery devoted to hip-hop photography. From these ventures, he accrued a massive archive, which lived in a storage space in the basement of his building until he sold the collection to Cornell University last year. Soon it will also live online
Adler sent Cornell University 500 vinyl recordings, an impressive collection of books in several languages and roughly 100,000 newspaper and magazine articles about rap and hip-hop. One of the books — in Polish — is a 600-page encyclopedia of rap. Another is a collection by French photographer Sophie Bramly."
Read the rest here
Adler was the founding publicity director of Def Jam Records. One of his first assignments was getting pop music critics at daily newspapers to cover one of the label's new artists, LL Cool J. He worked at Def Jam for six years, before going independent and later running a gallery devoted to hip-hop photography. From these ventures, he accrued a massive archive, which lived in a storage space in the basement of his building until he sold the collection to Cornell University last year. Soon it will also live online
Adler sent Cornell University 500 vinyl recordings, an impressive collection of books in several languages and roughly 100,000 newspaper and magazine articles about rap and hip-hop. One of the books — in Polish — is a 600-page encyclopedia of rap. Another is a collection by French photographer Sophie Bramly."
Read the rest here
Casablanca through Graffiti
" Casablanca is a legendary city. But Abul-Hasanat Siddique has just discovered something that's not usually part of the legend: explosive street art."
Read and see the rest here
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Context for 'Fuck tha Police' by NWA
"With a few notable exceptions, rappers have been conspicuously absent in the response to the grand jury decisions in Ferguson and Staten Island. The Internets want to know why.
Back in 1970, CSNY’s protest anthem “Ohio”
was on the radio within a few weeks of the massacre at Kent State—and
that was in 1970. Those records had to be pressed up on vinyl and
delivered to radio stations by actual human beings.
Theoretically,
a rapper could have issued a response to #Ferguson, say, the same
afternoon Darren Wilson shot Mike Brown dead in the street, or the same
evening a grand jury decided he shouldn’t be charged with a crime. We
have the technology.
Chuck
D, who once called hip-hop the black CNN, in what’s since become one of
the most shopworn cliches in the history of hip-hop journalism, often
touted the Internets’ potential in this regard."
read the rest here (goes through various hip hop artists involved in this issue)
Immortal Technique comments on this as well, which I've posted here
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Graffiti artist in critical condition after being run over by Police car
"Florida graffiti artist was taken off life support over the weekend after he sustained a brain injury when he was hit by an undercover Miami Police officer’s car while he was tagging a building."
read here
Criolo Doido (Brazil)
"Criolo delivers a stinging social critique in song and
rhyme, taking in Brazil’s crippling inequality, its drug problem, its
violence and the growing obsession with consumerism that came with the
country’s economic development. But the message is delivered as
entertainment, not lecture, because this is a show, not a political
discourse."
read the rest here
read the rest here
Doel (Belgium): The ghost town graffiti artists tried to save
"But as it emptied, Doel became something of a paradise for some of Europe's best-known graffiti artists. Some residents even encouraged street artists to turn up, in an attempt to create an open-air gallery."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30348086
Sunday, December 7, 2014
Questlove on Iggy
"Here's the thing: the song is effective and catchy as hell, and it works. Just the over-enunciation of "hold you down"? [Laughs]It makes me chuckle because all I can see is my assistant holding a brush in the mirror and singing it.
I'm caught in between. And I defend it. I see false Instagram posts like, "She said the N-word! She said the N-word!" I'll call people out — "Yo, don't troll." I know you're ready to give your 42-page dissertation on theGrio about why this is culture vulture-ism. You know, we as black people have to come to grips that hip-hop is a contagious culture. If you love something, you gotta set it free. I will say that "Fancy," above any song that I've ever heard or dealt with, is a game-changer in that fact that we're truly going to have to come to grips with the fact that hip-hop has spread its wings.
And to tell the truth, I was saying this last year, I don't think it's any mistake that four or five of my favorite singers are from Australia. Like between Hiatus Kaiyote, there's a bunch I can name for you right now, but I don't think it's a mistake that a lot of of my favorite artists are coming from Down Under. A lot of them more soulful than what we're dealing with now. When you think soul music and Aretha Franklin and the Baptist-born singer, that's sort of an idea in the past. As black people, we're really not in the church as we used to be, and that's reflected in the songs now.
I'm not going to lie to you, I'm torn between the opinions on the Internet, but I'mma let Iggy be Iggy. It's not even politically correct dribble. The song is effective. I'm in the middle of the approximation of the enunciation, I'll say. Part of me hopes she grows out of that and says it with her regular dialect — I think that would be cooler. But, yeah, "Fancy" is the song of the summer."
http://gawker.com/questlove-gives-definitive-take-on-iggy-azaleas-hip-hop-1609733808/+kellyconaboy
Friday, December 5, 2014
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Monday, December 1, 2014
On Bathroom Walls
"An oft-cited 1983 study defines three categories of graffiti: Tourist graffiti (“John wuz here”), inner-city graffiti (like tagging and street art), and toilet graffiti (or “latrinalia” as it’s sometimes called in academic literature).
What makes toilet graffiti special, and worthy of its own entire category, is the uniqueness of the space in which people are writing. Public bathrooms are weird places. There’s a tension to doing private activities in a public space, with only the flimsiest of boundaries hiding some of our culture’s biggest taboos—genitals and bodily functions. Hence all the scatological and sexual prose that latrinalia often consists of: People are just deriving inspiration from their surroundings.
Public bathrooms are also (usually) gender-segregated, creating institutionalized single-gender spaces that you almost never see anywhere else. Perhaps because of this, most research on toilet graffiti has studied the differences between what men and women write in their respective stalls. Alfred Kinsey (yes, that Alfred Kinsey) was the first to do this, in the 1950s. He and his team found that men wrote more, and dirtier, things than women, who were more likely to write about romantic love.
“Kinsey and his colleagues suggested that women’s lesser tendency to produce erotic graffiti was due to their greater regard for moral codes and social conventions,” writes Nick Haslam, a professor of psychology at Melbourne University, in his book Psychology in the Bathroom.
These fairly stereotypical analyses persist in toilet graffiti studies over the years. Though some studies say women write just as much as men, men’s is typically seen as being more aggressive and more sexual, while women’s is more conversational and more likely to be about love. Though most bathroom graffiti research was done in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, a couple studies done in the past few years have found similar things.
Nicholas Matthews, a PhD candidate at Indiana University, was the lead author on a 2012 study that analyzed toilet graffiti in nine bars in a Midwestern town. He and his fellow researchers found that the most common type of graffiti was “presence-identifying” (just scrawling your name, for example), but men were identifying their presence more than women. Women, on the other hand, wrote more insults. Matthews explains this using evolutionary psychology, saying that boosting oneself up is a typical male mating strategy, whereas putting other women down is a classic female gambit."
Read the rest here
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Urban Artists, Navajo Nation
"In the third year of his experiment inviting artists to paint and wheat-paste in the Navajo Nation, organizer Chip Thomas, whose own street persona is Jetsonorama, appears to have hit a community service vein. “The relationship with the community became deeper,” he says as he relates the integration of some of the artists work relating directly to the history and the stories people tell in this sunbaked part of Arizona. More residency than festival, “The Painted Desert Project” began as a retreat offered to artists Thomas had met through his own association with Street Art festivals like Open Walls in Baltimore."
read and see more here
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Friday, November 21, 2014
Questlove interviews Cornel West
QUESTLOVE: So you were teaching your class about the difference in
social impact between Marcus Garvey and Du Bois. And what I took away
was the question of whether we need a messiah figure to lead society, or
can it be truly grassroots? I also wonder what good it will do today.
Chuck D taught me a long time ago to aim really small. And everyone now
has [Michael] Jordan-itis—everyone wants the star position. So where do
you fall, on the question of how we can best move forward as a society,
between the Moses-messiah figure, like Martin Luther King Jr. or, say,
Occupy Wall Street, which really didn't have a leader?
CORNEL WEST: I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft. I take my second cue from [organizer and activist] Ella Baker that says, with that integrity, honesty, decency, master of craft, there must be an attempt to find, among everyday people, vision, voice, and modes of organizing and mobilizing that does not result in the messianic model, in the HNIC, the head negro in charge. This is where Martin King comes in, and the distinction we made in class between conspicuous charisma and service-oriented charisma. It's possible to be highly charismatic the way John Coltrane was, and still de-center oneself, as he did, to allow for McCoy, and Elvin, and Reggie, and the others [who played with Coltrane] to lift their voices with tremendous power. Martin, at his best, was able to empower others, galvanize others and, through an integrity and humility, recognize he's just another human being, not a messiah. At his worst, he was the Moses that everybody had to defer to.
read the rest here
CORNEL WEST: I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft. I take my second cue from [organizer and activist] Ella Baker that says, with that integrity, honesty, decency, master of craft, there must be an attempt to find, among everyday people, vision, voice, and modes of organizing and mobilizing that does not result in the messianic model, in the HNIC, the head negro in charge. This is where Martin King comes in, and the distinction we made in class between conspicuous charisma and service-oriented charisma. It's possible to be highly charismatic the way John Coltrane was, and still de-center oneself, as he did, to allow for McCoy, and Elvin, and Reggie, and the others [who played with Coltrane] to lift their voices with tremendous power. Martin, at his best, was able to empower others, galvanize others and, through an integrity and humility, recognize he's just another human being, not a messiah. At his worst, he was the Moses that everybody had to defer to.
read the rest here
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Monday, November 17, 2014
Sunday, November 16, 2014
What Hip-Hop Can Teach Academia
"The hip-hop world has a lot more
in common with academia than most people think -- and it has important lessons
for the endless academic hand-wringing over its public relevance. Beat-making
and hip-hop lyrics are essentially a dense web of footnotes and citation. It is
as literally impossible for the novice to understand the meaning of the
complex, highly local references to Brooklyn personalities, hip-hop history,
and gangster culture in a Jay-Z verse as it is for the uninitiated to make
sense of a sophisticated theoretical text. Unlike academia, however, hip-hop
adapted a long time ago to the recording industry's Internet-fueled crisis --
and came out stronger for its struggles.
For those who don't follow such things, Kendrick Lamar is a young rapper from Compton, California who took the music world by the throat last year. Last year, he released one of the best albums of the last decade, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, which received rapturously thoughtful reviews and went platinum (even when the album leaked, you see, fans still bought it for proof). He turned in star guest verses for contemporaries like A$AP Rocky, B.o.B, and Pusha T to rap gods like Eminem and Talib Kweli. He opened for Kanye West's Yeezus tour. He appeared on about a million magazine covers, and received seven Grammy nominations.
And then he lost them all -- to Macklemore. ('Nuff said.) Everyone, including Macklemore, understood that this was as close to a crime against humanity as the Grammys allow. But instead of sulking, whining, or grabbing the mic from Taylor Swift, Kendrick used his scheduled Grammy performance to make Imagine Dragons, one of the year's top-selling rock bands, into his backup band and, well, let Kendrick tell it: "I need you to recognize that Plan B is to win your hearts right here while we're at the Grammys." And he did, with a triumphant, uncompromising performance that brought down the house and momentarily made the Grammys matter again. Instead of brooding over the ignorance of the gatekeepers, Kendrick just seized the moment and went out and relegated them to irrelevance.
That's what academic bloggers have been doing for the last decade: ignoring hierarchies and traditional venues and instead hustling on our own terms. Instead of lamenting over the absence of an outlet for academics to publish high-quality work, we wrote blogs on the things we cared about and created venues like the Middle East Channel and the Monkey Cage. Academic blogs and new primarily online publications rapidly evolved into a dense, noisy, and highly competitive ecosystem where established scholars, rising young stars, and diverse voices battled and collaborated."
Read here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/03/what_hip_hop_and_kendrick_lamar_can_teach_academia
For those who don't follow such things, Kendrick Lamar is a young rapper from Compton, California who took the music world by the throat last year. Last year, he released one of the best albums of the last decade, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, which received rapturously thoughtful reviews and went platinum (even when the album leaked, you see, fans still bought it for proof). He turned in star guest verses for contemporaries like A$AP Rocky, B.o.B, and Pusha T to rap gods like Eminem and Talib Kweli. He opened for Kanye West's Yeezus tour. He appeared on about a million magazine covers, and received seven Grammy nominations.
And then he lost them all -- to Macklemore. ('Nuff said.) Everyone, including Macklemore, understood that this was as close to a crime against humanity as the Grammys allow. But instead of sulking, whining, or grabbing the mic from Taylor Swift, Kendrick used his scheduled Grammy performance to make Imagine Dragons, one of the year's top-selling rock bands, into his backup band and, well, let Kendrick tell it: "I need you to recognize that Plan B is to win your hearts right here while we're at the Grammys." And he did, with a triumphant, uncompromising performance that brought down the house and momentarily made the Grammys matter again. Instead of brooding over the ignorance of the gatekeepers, Kendrick just seized the moment and went out and relegated them to irrelevance.
That's what academic bloggers have been doing for the last decade: ignoring hierarchies and traditional venues and instead hustling on our own terms. Instead of lamenting over the absence of an outlet for academics to publish high-quality work, we wrote blogs on the things we cared about and created venues like the Middle East Channel and the Monkey Cage. Academic blogs and new primarily online publications rapidly evolved into a dense, noisy, and highly competitive ecosystem where established scholars, rising young stars, and diverse voices battled and collaborated."
Read here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/03/what_hip_hop_and_kendrick_lamar_can_teach_academia
Green's History of Slang
Not directly related to hip-hop but the topic of 'slang' is certainly relevant:
"America’s greater tolerance for the genius inherent in
grassroots language may well explain why its literature, from Mark Twain
to Philip Roth, is better connected to the “workingman” as a speaking
subject rather than as an object of anxiety. In the 21st-century world,
where informal oral media (TV, film, YouTube) shape global discourse, it
is American slang that has “gone the distance.”
Green offers us 18 broadly chronological chapters on the
history of slang. Some of these chapters focus on particular forms where
slang is to be found (e.g., “The Stage and the Song”), others on
particular speech communities (Australia, America, African Americans),
others on recurrent themes (sex, sports, war). There is much here of
interest, yet it must be confessed that the material is sometimes drier
than such a lubricious subject would lead one to anticipate. Green has
elsewhere written explicitly for the popular market: He is responsible
for such tomes as The Big Book of Filth (1999), The Big Book of Bodily Functions (2001), and the Dictionary of Insulting Quotations (1997).
Here, however, he is writing as a lexicographer for an academic press,
and some of these chapters make dense reading for anyone who does not
have a scholarly interest in the development of vernacular language.
Green’s method is to cite sources (authors, books) rich in recorded
slang and to discuss their place in the development of the glossary of
what we know (or assume) to have been slang patter across the years.
These sources can involve fascinating micro-narratives, as when we are
introduced to characters such as John Taylor (1578-1653), the
“Water-Poet,” a writer who had made his living as a boatman and traded
on this to make a literary splash. Long before the days of Amazon, he
became a successful pioneer of self-publishing, largely through
publicity stunts designed to attract readers’ interest. He would plan a
journey—to Prague, or on foot from London to Edinburgh with no money—and
then seek sponsorship to undertake the trip and write about it. He
produced at least 150 works, liberally larded with loose language."
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
R.I.P. Big Bank Hank (from the Sugerhill Gang)
"TMZ reports
that Big Bank Hank, one third of pioneering rap group the Sugarhill
Gang, died early this morning after a battle with cancer. Hank, born
Henry Jackson, was 57.
The Sugarhill Gang, and Hank in particular, have a long and strange story. Hip-hop had been thriving as live party music in the Bronx for years before the group recorded 1979′s “Rapper’s Delight,” the first-ever hit hip-hop record, in 1979. The Sugarhill Gang weren’t really a part of that scene. Instead, Sugarhill Records founder Sylvia Robinson put the group together. Legend has it that she had the idea after hearing Hank rap while he was serving her pizza in a New Jersey restaurant."
read rest here
The Sugarhill Gang, and Hank in particular, have a long and strange story. Hip-hop had been thriving as live party music in the Bronx for years before the group recorded 1979′s “Rapper’s Delight,” the first-ever hit hip-hop record, in 1979. The Sugarhill Gang weren’t really a part of that scene. Instead, Sugarhill Records founder Sylvia Robinson put the group together. Legend has it that she had the idea after hearing Hank rap while he was serving her pizza in a New Jersey restaurant."
read rest here
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
"Hip Hop's Promising New Role in Therapy"
"A growing body of research suggests that those who live in
violence-stricken communities are subject to post-traumatic stress and PTSD at rates higher than the rest of the country.
One creative antidote to this unfortunate reality may be found, perhaps not surprisingly, in the music that emerged alongside the culture of the inner city: hip hop.
Cendrine Robinson, a clinical psychology student at Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, recently published an article, "Dream & nightmares: What hip-hop can teach us about Black youth," in American Psychological Association's newsletter, In the Public Interest. In her article, Robinson discusses her experience using hip hop to counsel at-risk youth.
From counseling teenage girls about HIV prevention, to helping young men on probation and Iraq war veterans, Robinson said that the inclusion of hip hop music helps to start a dialogue between client and therapist through a vocabulary and framework comfortable for both.
Robinson writes, "Hip hop therapy has elements of expressive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Hip hop music is utilized to engage clients in treatment by helping establish rapport with the therapist. Music can also help clients identify emotions and reframe cognition."
Artists like Chief Keef, Meek Mill and Rick Ross now populate Robinson's Pandora stations, because they are the artists the majority of her clients are listening to. She has found Meek Mill particularly helpful in this respect, especially his song "Traumatized."
In an interview with The Fader, Meek Mill said about Robinson's research, "That's what I make the music for, to be able to touch people. Even if you didn't come from the hood. You don't have to be from the streets."
As Robinson says in her article, "If we listen carefully, we may be able to find better solutions to address the pervasive violence in our community."
read the rest here
One creative antidote to this unfortunate reality may be found, perhaps not surprisingly, in the music that emerged alongside the culture of the inner city: hip hop.
Cendrine Robinson, a clinical psychology student at Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, recently published an article, "Dream & nightmares: What hip-hop can teach us about Black youth," in American Psychological Association's newsletter, In the Public Interest. In her article, Robinson discusses her experience using hip hop to counsel at-risk youth.
From counseling teenage girls about HIV prevention, to helping young men on probation and Iraq war veterans, Robinson said that the inclusion of hip hop music helps to start a dialogue between client and therapist through a vocabulary and framework comfortable for both.
Robinson writes, "Hip hop therapy has elements of expressive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Hip hop music is utilized to engage clients in treatment by helping establish rapport with the therapist. Music can also help clients identify emotions and reframe cognition."
Artists like Chief Keef, Meek Mill and Rick Ross now populate Robinson's Pandora stations, because they are the artists the majority of her clients are listening to. She has found Meek Mill particularly helpful in this respect, especially his song "Traumatized."
In an interview with The Fader, Meek Mill said about Robinson's research, "That's what I make the music for, to be able to touch people. Even if you didn't come from the hood. You don't have to be from the streets."
As Robinson says in her article, "If we listen carefully, we may be able to find better solutions to address the pervasive violence in our community."
read the rest here
Monday, November 10, 2014
Hip-Hop and Religion
read original article here by: Kwanele Sosibo
I had these thoughts dancing in my mind when I visited an old acquaintance in a Craighall complex the other day. I remembered once, almost ten years ago, riding wild in the streets of Joburg trying to decipher his copy of Ghostface Killah’s woozy classic Supreme Clientele. Ghostface, a proclaimed adherent of the Five Percent Nation’s beliefs (they believe that Allah is the physical black man – Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head), took language to extreme heights by melding the “supreme alphabet” (a coded language based on ascribing meaning to each letter of the alphabet) to his already heady, psychedelic street poems. That album pretty much cemented his place as one of the culture’s premier lyricists, even though much of his subject matter tread worn ground.
Today, Mfundisi Dlungu is a self-employed architect. When we do reminisce about hip-hop’s importance, it is with the distance and objectivity of hindsight, and arguments about who is the “freshest” are underscored by an existential urgency.
Seated on opposite ends of a work desk in his lounge, Dlungu – an athletic figure in a pale yellow shirt, cream jeans and white cross-trainers – cues tracks on his iPad as we chew the fat on our favourite subject. “What made me check for it [hip-hop] was that they were saying that Islam was a religion for the black man, and not Christianity,” says Dlungu. Emerging from the kitchen, he places drinks on wooden coasters and continues. “But when I checked both of these religions, neither belonged to us. So how could we, as Africans, lay claim to something that is not ours?”
Dlungu, a “Christian by default” who never goes to church, adds that it was the mixed messages that led him to doubt hip-hop as a catalyst to spiritual awakening. “Even these cats who were representing that Five Percent thing, they were still about drinking 40 ounces [a measure of beer]. How are you gonna be a Muslim if you’re drinking and fucking whores?” he asks rhetorically. “There wasn’t consistency in what they were saying. In terms of spirituality, the only thing I found in hip-hop was “keeping it real”. Do you! That was the only thing more than the religious part of it because that was a mess…”
Today, the idea of keeping it real is something of a laughing stock in hip-hop. It is an antiquated concept based on keeping your subject matter congruous with your daily reality. Nevertheless, it did bestow on Dlungu a strong template for forming his own identity. Today, he still speaks in “golden era” hip-hop slang laced with expletives but without the requisite accent as he dissects the culture’s sinister materialism. “Who can relate to holding money and just throwing it out there, unless you are a stupid motherfucker,” he says in reference to a standard image in mainstream hip-hop videos. “Even if I was to make my money I still couldn’t relate to that. You can relate to Shaq saying ‘my biological didn’t bother’. It just inspired me to be an individual.”
For a while, during our adolescence in the nineties, it felt like hip-hop could answer all of life’s questions for us. While it evolved spontaneously, it was nurtured by healthy doses of street corner intellect and convergent esoterica to such an extent that relating to hip-hop has often felt like relating to an all-knowing, all-powerful being.“You are dealing with heaven, while you are walking through hell. When I say heaven, I don’t mean up in the clouds, because heaven is no higher than your head and hell is no lower than your feet.”–Rakim, as told to journalist Harry Allen.
I had these thoughts dancing in my mind when I visited an old acquaintance in a Craighall complex the other day. I remembered once, almost ten years ago, riding wild in the streets of Joburg trying to decipher his copy of Ghostface Killah’s woozy classic Supreme Clientele. Ghostface, a proclaimed adherent of the Five Percent Nation’s beliefs (they believe that Allah is the physical black man – Arm, Leg, Leg, Arm, Head), took language to extreme heights by melding the “supreme alphabet” (a coded language based on ascribing meaning to each letter of the alphabet) to his already heady, psychedelic street poems. That album pretty much cemented his place as one of the culture’s premier lyricists, even though much of his subject matter tread worn ground.
Today, Mfundisi Dlungu is a self-employed architect. When we do reminisce about hip-hop’s importance, it is with the distance and objectivity of hindsight, and arguments about who is the “freshest” are underscored by an existential urgency.
Seated on opposite ends of a work desk in his lounge, Dlungu – an athletic figure in a pale yellow shirt, cream jeans and white cross-trainers – cues tracks on his iPad as we chew the fat on our favourite subject. “What made me check for it [hip-hop] was that they were saying that Islam was a religion for the black man, and not Christianity,” says Dlungu. Emerging from the kitchen, he places drinks on wooden coasters and continues. “But when I checked both of these religions, neither belonged to us. So how could we, as Africans, lay claim to something that is not ours?”
Dlungu, a “Christian by default” who never goes to church, adds that it was the mixed messages that led him to doubt hip-hop as a catalyst to spiritual awakening. “Even these cats who were representing that Five Percent thing, they were still about drinking 40 ounces [a measure of beer]. How are you gonna be a Muslim if you’re drinking and fucking whores?” he asks rhetorically. “There wasn’t consistency in what they were saying. In terms of spirituality, the only thing I found in hip-hop was “keeping it real”. Do you! That was the only thing more than the religious part of it because that was a mess…”
Today, the idea of keeping it real is something of a laughing stock in hip-hop. It is an antiquated concept based on keeping your subject matter congruous with your daily reality. Nevertheless, it did bestow on Dlungu a strong template for forming his own identity. Today, he still speaks in “golden era” hip-hop slang laced with expletives but without the requisite accent as he dissects the culture’s sinister materialism. “Who can relate to holding money and just throwing it out there, unless you are a stupid motherfucker,” he says in reference to a standard image in mainstream hip-hop videos. “Even if I was to make my money I still couldn’t relate to that. You can relate to Shaq saying ‘my biological didn’t bother’. It just inspired me to be an individual.”
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Friday, November 7, 2014
Thursday, November 6, 2014
2011 MC Meta - 사투리의 눈물 & 무까끼하이 (Korea)
Rapping in a southern Korean dialect as opposed to "proper" Korean or "Seoul Speech/Talk," which makes this piece particular - especially in an age when local dialects are not being used as often as they used to be (some Korean scholars have projected the eventual extinction of local dialects because of a bias against them in the Seoul job market and the association that they are too "country" or "unintelligent"; students (from elementary to high school and college) have experienced discrimination as well; for those who understand Korean - sorry no subs - click here: '사투리의 눈물'
which is a documentary that discusses this issue; it's good, the soundtrack is above)
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Monday, November 3, 2014
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Thursday, September 18, 2014
May 27, 1994 Tribute to Arsenio Hall
Featuring:
Yo Yo, MC Lyte, Treach (Naughty By Nature), A Tribe Called Quest, Fu-Schnickens, CL Smooth, Guru (Gangstarr), Das Efx, GZA (Wu Tang Clan), and KRS-One
Friday, September 12, 2014
On Advertising
From Zen Pencils
And just to clarify the quote:
http://readingfrenzy.com/ledger/2012/03/taking_the_piss_conclusion
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Friday, August 29, 2014
Violent
They claim that I'm violent, just cause I refuse to be silent
These hypocrites are havin fits, cause I'm not buyin it
Defyin it, envious because I will rebel against
any oppressor, and this is known as self defense
I show no mercy, they claim that I'm the lunatic
But when the shit gets thick, I'm the one you go and get
Don't look confused, the truth is so plain to see
Cause I'm the nigga that you sell-outs are ashamed to be
In every Jeep and every car, brothers stomp this
I'm Never Ignorant, Getting Goals Accomplished
The underground railroad on an uprise
This time the truth's gettin told, heard enough lies
I told em fight back, attack on society
If this is violence, then violent's what I gotta be
If you investigate you'll find out where it's comin from
Look through our history, America's the violent one
Unlock my brain, break the chains of your misery
This time the payback for evil shit you did to me
They call me militant, racist cause I will resist
You wanna censor somethin, motherfucker censor this!
My words are weapons, and I'm steppin to the silent
Wakin up the masses, but you, claim that I'm violent
These hypocrites are havin fits, cause I'm not buyin it
Defyin it, envious because I will rebel against
any oppressor, and this is known as self defense
I show no mercy, they claim that I'm the lunatic
But when the shit gets thick, I'm the one you go and get
Don't look confused, the truth is so plain to see
Cause I'm the nigga that you sell-outs are ashamed to be
In every Jeep and every car, brothers stomp this
I'm Never Ignorant, Getting Goals Accomplished
The underground railroad on an uprise
This time the truth's gettin told, heard enough lies
I told em fight back, attack on society
If this is violence, then violent's what I gotta be
If you investigate you'll find out where it's comin from
Look through our history, America's the violent one
Unlock my brain, break the chains of your misery
This time the payback for evil shit you did to me
They call me militant, racist cause I will resist
You wanna censor somethin, motherfucker censor this!
My words are weapons, and I'm steppin to the silent
Wakin up the masses, but you, claim that I'm violent
-Tupac 'Violent' (1991)
Killer Mike on Ferguson
"We are human beings. We deserve to be buried by out
children not the other way around. No matter how u felt about black
people look at this mother and look at this father and tell me as a
human being how u cannot feel empathy for them. How can u not feel
sympathy for their pain and loss. These are not 'THOTS, niggas/niggers,
hoes, Ballers, Divas.' These two people are parents. They are humans
that produced a child and loved that child and that child was
slaughtered like Game and left face down as public spectacle while his
blood drained down the street.
"Look at the pain of this mother; look into her eyes. Look
at the man behind her. Look at that father made helpless and hurt that
he [could] not defend his seed. Don't debate. Don't insert your agenda.
Save me the bullshit Black On Black Crime speech and look at these [two]
Noble creatures called humans and look at what [government]-sanctioned
murder has done. It has robbed them of their humanity and replaced it
with pain and shame, suffering and hurt.
"I don't care if others rioted or why. I don't care that
ballplayers and rappers are what they [should] be. I care that we as
humans care as much about one another more. I care we see past Class,
race and culture and honor the humanity that unites our species. Stop
talking and LOOK at these PEOPLE. LOOK at these HUMANS and stand with
them against a system allows a Human PIG to slaughter their child.
Forgive any typos love and respect u all."
Source
and here
Underrepresented working class in rap
BLVR: One of the things over the past couple years
that has helped people connect with what you’re doing is that you’re
rapping from the perspective of someone in their thirties rather than
someone in their teens or twenties. Do you think that older perspective
is missing or underrepresented in rap right now?
KM: I don’t know if it’s an age thing for me, but it is very much a class thing. The working class is underrepresented in rap. There is something valuable that the working class has to offer that doesn’t get honored in rap music in the way that it should be or could be. I don’t drink champagne that often; I drink whiskey every day I can. That’s the difference. So I tend not to rap about champagne-type things, I tend to rap about whiskey things, things that a workingman gets off his job and contemplates. Scarface was twenty-three years old when he wrote “I Seen a Man Die.” There are rappers who are forty-three years old who will never write anything with that type of depth.
BLVR: It seems like a lot of younger rappers feel the need to rap about the champagne-type things because they’re projecting a fantasy.
KM: Yeah, and I can’t criticize the fantasy; it’s just a fantasy, though. Kids have fantasies. Kids rap about Bentleys and diamonds because that’s what they want or that’s what they think you’re supposed to do to get rich. My job is to offer an alternative, because the people I saw who got rich, they did some diamond-y things, but they also did very practical things that I saw my grandparents do. When I think of rich rappers, I’m thinking less of the guys who I see on MTV every day and I’m thinking more of E-40, who independently became rich, got big checks from rap, then diverted that into community and businesses. It’s why I tell people that one of my favorite rappers is Rick Ross. The fact that he owns a Wingstop and is in negotiations to buy twenty-five more: when I hear that I go, Wow, he’s probably going to employ two hundred to two hundred and fifty people. That’s very significant to me. That’s a reason to congratulate and to support him.
BLVR: You’ve rapped about the culpability of rap artists in terms of the values and ideas that they spread and what they give back to the communities that they came from. When did this obligation begin? Did rappers always have this obligation, or was it when rap became a global and commercial force?
KM: It’s always been. I don’t place obligations on you because you’re a rapper; I place obligations on you because you’re a man. Most rappers are black men. If you’re a black man, you owe something to the community that you came from. If you’re rapping about the community that you came from, and you’re romanticizing parts of it for the entertainment of people who don’t look like you, you certainly owe something to the community. That’s why when people try to criticize a person like my good friend T.I., I remind them that all the shit you want to talk about him, one of the first things he ever did with his money was start a construction company, and they were building houses in the community. How many rappers have the gall to do that, to build a construction company to build houses in the inner city? To me that shows a lot of forethought.
I hold rappers just as accountable as I hold the 100 Black Men of Atlanta. I hold them just as accountable as I hold Herman Russell. I know they don’t have a hundred million dollars like Herman Russell, but you’ve got twenty-five thousand dollars to open a chicken-wing stand, and to make sure that the people working in that chicken-wing stand look like you, and to make sure you don’t have bulletproof glass and the people aren’t being served like animals in cages at the zoo. You can do that instead of buying a funky-ass gold chain.
[...]
KM: How can a black man not be paranoid? How can I look at any statistic that tells me that if you’re not an average reader by ten years old, you’re destined for prison? How can I say someone doesn’t have a vested interest in making sure the public-school systems stay fucked-up? How can I trust you when it was less than a hundred years ago that there was something called the Tuskegee experiment, which allowed black men to live with syphilis just to see the effects on the human body. As a rapper, how can I not believe in conspiracies?
That doesn’t mean I believe there’s some secret room of people who had a meeting about gangster rap, and that it was pushed. I’m talking about why public schools are truly fucked, why neighborhoods that never could get fixed, all of sudden when people start gentrifying them, we get public services like trash and regular police patrols. Why are churches getting money to shut up or push certain political campaigns through the community? Those are the real conspiracies I worry about, because those are things that are really affecting us.
I don’t have to think that there’s some grand satanic conspiracy for people to inject reptilian minds into mine; I don’t know about all that. But what I do know is that I don’t trust the church or the government, and anything the church or the government tells me I assume to be a lie or a conspiracy, until proven true.
Source
KM: I don’t know if it’s an age thing for me, but it is very much a class thing. The working class is underrepresented in rap. There is something valuable that the working class has to offer that doesn’t get honored in rap music in the way that it should be or could be. I don’t drink champagne that often; I drink whiskey every day I can. That’s the difference. So I tend not to rap about champagne-type things, I tend to rap about whiskey things, things that a workingman gets off his job and contemplates. Scarface was twenty-three years old when he wrote “I Seen a Man Die.” There are rappers who are forty-three years old who will never write anything with that type of depth.
BLVR: It seems like a lot of younger rappers feel the need to rap about the champagne-type things because they’re projecting a fantasy.
KM: Yeah, and I can’t criticize the fantasy; it’s just a fantasy, though. Kids have fantasies. Kids rap about Bentleys and diamonds because that’s what they want or that’s what they think you’re supposed to do to get rich. My job is to offer an alternative, because the people I saw who got rich, they did some diamond-y things, but they also did very practical things that I saw my grandparents do. When I think of rich rappers, I’m thinking less of the guys who I see on MTV every day and I’m thinking more of E-40, who independently became rich, got big checks from rap, then diverted that into community and businesses. It’s why I tell people that one of my favorite rappers is Rick Ross. The fact that he owns a Wingstop and is in negotiations to buy twenty-five more: when I hear that I go, Wow, he’s probably going to employ two hundred to two hundred and fifty people. That’s very significant to me. That’s a reason to congratulate and to support him.
BLVR: You’ve rapped about the culpability of rap artists in terms of the values and ideas that they spread and what they give back to the communities that they came from. When did this obligation begin? Did rappers always have this obligation, or was it when rap became a global and commercial force?
KM: It’s always been. I don’t place obligations on you because you’re a rapper; I place obligations on you because you’re a man. Most rappers are black men. If you’re a black man, you owe something to the community that you came from. If you’re rapping about the community that you came from, and you’re romanticizing parts of it for the entertainment of people who don’t look like you, you certainly owe something to the community. That’s why when people try to criticize a person like my good friend T.I., I remind them that all the shit you want to talk about him, one of the first things he ever did with his money was start a construction company, and they were building houses in the community. How many rappers have the gall to do that, to build a construction company to build houses in the inner city? To me that shows a lot of forethought.
I hold rappers just as accountable as I hold the 100 Black Men of Atlanta. I hold them just as accountable as I hold Herman Russell. I know they don’t have a hundred million dollars like Herman Russell, but you’ve got twenty-five thousand dollars to open a chicken-wing stand, and to make sure that the people working in that chicken-wing stand look like you, and to make sure you don’t have bulletproof glass and the people aren’t being served like animals in cages at the zoo. You can do that instead of buying a funky-ass gold chain.
[...]
KM: How can a black man not be paranoid? How can I look at any statistic that tells me that if you’re not an average reader by ten years old, you’re destined for prison? How can I say someone doesn’t have a vested interest in making sure the public-school systems stay fucked-up? How can I trust you when it was less than a hundred years ago that there was something called the Tuskegee experiment, which allowed black men to live with syphilis just to see the effects on the human body. As a rapper, how can I not believe in conspiracies?
That doesn’t mean I believe there’s some secret room of people who had a meeting about gangster rap, and that it was pushed. I’m talking about why public schools are truly fucked, why neighborhoods that never could get fixed, all of sudden when people start gentrifying them, we get public services like trash and regular police patrols. Why are churches getting money to shut up or push certain political campaigns through the community? Those are the real conspiracies I worry about, because those are things that are really affecting us.
I don’t have to think that there’s some grand satanic conspiracy for people to inject reptilian minds into mine; I don’t know about all that. But what I do know is that I don’t trust the church or the government, and anything the church or the government tells me I assume to be a lie or a conspiracy, until proven true.
Source
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Friday, August 8, 2014
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Friday, July 25, 2014
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Friday, July 18, 2014
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Rome tells a story of Graffiti
"Scribbling emotions on walls has been a tradition in Rome going back thousands of years and even the word "graffiti" was first used for markings found in the ruins of Pompeii. The modern version could be the scrawls seen in maternity wards in the Italian capital: "Get a move on, auntie's waiting!", "Chiara is born!", "Welcome little Mattia!".
From wealthy neighborhoods in the city's north to working class suburbs in the south, Romans are not shy about scrawling on walls -- often with phrases in local dialect. Anti-government satire, celebrations of football success and declarations of love -- poetic or crude -- can all be found alongside racist insults and fascist imagery."
Read the rest here
Saturday, July 12, 2014
Sunday, July 6, 2014
"Graffiti is the Most Important Art Form in the Last Half-Century"
By Bill Benzon of New Savanna
read article here
read article here
...though
many don’t think of it as art at all, but as crime. After all graffiti –
by which I mean the styles that originated in New York City and
Philadelphia in the late 1960s and early 1970s – was born when kids and
young adults began spray-canning their names on other people’s walls
without permission. They were committing crimes, and some of them did
time for it. Still do.
Art? Crime? Art? Crime? The question isn’t a real or least not a very deep one. Why can’t graffiti be both artistic and criminal?
- See more at:
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/graffiti-is-the-most-important-art-form-of-the-last-half-century.html#sthash.s7ZTERB7.dpuf
...though
many don’t think of it as art at all, but as crime. After all graffiti –
by which I mean the styles that originated in New York City and
Philadelphia in the late 1960s and early 1970s – was born when kids and
young adults began spray-canning their names on other people’s walls
without permission. They were committing crimes, and some of them did
time for it. Still do.
Art? Crime? Art? Crime? The question isn’t a real or least not a very deep one. Why can’t graffiti be both artistic and criminal?
- See more at:
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/graffiti-is-the-most-important-art-form-of-the-last-half-century.html#sthash.s7ZTERB7.dpuf
...though
many don’t think of it as art at all, but as crime. After all graffiti –
by which I mean the styles that originated in New York City and
Philadelphia in the late 1960s and early 1970s – was born when kids and
young adults began spray-canning their names on other people’s walls
without permission. They were committing crimes, and some of them did
time for it. Still do.
Art? Crime? Art? Crime? The question isn’t a real or least not a very deep one. Why can’t graffiti be both artistic and criminal?
- See more at:
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/graffiti-is-the-most-important-art-form-of-the-last-half-century.html#sthash.s7ZTERB7.dpufv
...though
many don’t think of it as art at all, but as crime. After all graffiti –
by which I mean the styles that originated in New York City and
Philadelphia in the late 1960s and early 1970s – was born when kids and
young adults began spray-canning their names on other people’s walls
without permission. They were committing crimes, and some of them did
time for it. Still do.
Art? Crime? Art? Crime? The question isn’t a real or least not a very deep one. Why can’t graffiti be both artistic and criminal?
- See more at:
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/graffiti-is-the-most-important-art-form-of-the-last-half-century.html#sthash.s7ZTERB7.dpuf
...though
many don’t think of it as art at all, but as crime. After all graffiti –
by which I mean the styles that originated in New York City and
Philadelphia in the late 1960s and early 1970s – was born when kids and
young adults began spray-canning their names on other people’s walls
without permission. They were committing crimes, and some of them did
time for it. Still do.
Art? Crime? Art? Crime? The question isn’t a real or least not a very deep one. Why can’t graffiti be both artistic and criminal?
- See more at:
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/graffiti-is-the-most-important-art-form-of-the-last-half-century.html#sthash.s7ZTERB7.dpuf
...though
many don’t think of it as art at all, but as crime. After all graffiti –
by which I mean the styles that originated in New York City and
Philadelphia in the late 1960s and early 1970s – was born when kids and
young adults began spray-canning their names on other people’s walls
without permission. They were committing crimes, and some of them did
time for it. Still do.
Art? Crime? Art? Crime? The question isn’t a real or least not a very deep one. Why can’t graffiti be both artistic and criminal?
- See more at:
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/graffiti-is-the-most-important-art-form-of-the-last-half-century.html#sthash.s7ZTERB7.dpuf
...though
many don’t think of it as art at all, but as crime. After all graffiti –
by which I mean the styles that originated in New York City and
Philadelphia in the late 1960s and early 1970s – was born when kids and
young adults began spray-canning their names on other people’s walls
without permission. They were committing crimes, and some of them did
time for it. Still do.
Art? Crime? Art? Crime? The question isn’t a real or least not a very deep one. Why can’t graffiti be both artistic and criminal?
- See more at:
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/graffiti-is-the-most-important-art-form-of-the-last-half-century.html#sthash.s7ZTERB7.dpufSunday, June 22, 2014
Saturday, June 14, 2014
'The Gods of Hip Hop'
"
For many
years there’s been conflict over the consciousness Hip Hop and the
commercialization of the art form. Back in the ‘80s, when the music and
culture were still very much an underground movement, while many were
fighting to bring Hip Hop to the mainstream the “cross-over” was
considered the ultimate “sell-out.”
On one side
of the argument, you had visionaries like Russell Simmons fighting for
the advancement of the culture saying, “don’t treat our music and
expression any different than you do Rock N’ Roll or pop”—and on the
other side of the table there was a segment that believed an embrace by
“mainstream America” would mean the rapping of the culture.
As a result,
we began to see the divide and conquer strategy play out within the
culture itself, where now we have the so-called “God-conscious” artists
and the “elite” of Hip Hop, with a notion that if you’re making money in
the industry in 2013, and a lot of it, you can’t have a
“God-conscious”—you must be demonized and member of Illuminati. This
piece is not meant to argue the existence or non-existence of secret
societies or the impact commercialization has had on Hip Hop culture—but
to take another look at the game and the players in it and God’s hand
on both sides.
Let’s start
with this simple truth—Black people DO NOT control the entertainment
industry. Not in film, music, fashion, TV, radio, distribution, NOWHERE
are we “truly” in control of this industry. That’s a fact. Therefore,
if we’re going to play the game—then it’s about playing it to the “best”
of our ability and masterfully using it to gain some benefit while we
live—that is luxury, money, good homes and friendships in all walks of
life.
The other
truth is that there is no such thing as a “poor” God. The notion that
some Black people and some White people have is that “money is evil” and
there is “righteousness” in poverty. There is nothing righteous about
being without. God is a material God—if he wasn’t then there would be no
universe. Let’s get that clear."
Read more here via Rhetoric Race and Religion
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