source
Friday, January 31, 2014
What is "Yeezianity"?
"But for me, as a scholar of religion, I wonder how best to categorize
Yeezianity. Is it a religion? Is it a meme? Is this just some ploy to
get an entertainer’s attention and get a back stage invitation? With
such a low threshold of membership, the posting of a picture, is the
whole thing a joke? What is at stake for scholars of religion to call
this new creation a religion? What is at stake if we don’t? In many
cases we have allowed our subjects of study to determine the answer for
us. If they call themselves a member of a religious tradition or call
something a religion, we accept that. But is that abdicating our
analytical responsibilities, especially in a case such as this?
Moreover, with the scrutiny of those outside our discipline ever
increasing, do we risk ridicule by accepting this as a religion, or do
we defend it as such, explaining that it has beliefs, dogma, a messianic
figure, and even a ritual. I know it is a well-worn and even trite
conversation regarding the definition of religion. As the new semester
started a couple of weeks ago, I once more trotted out the various
definitions of Durkheim, Geertz, Frazier, Tillich, and the like. I noted
Asad’s dismissal to a universal definition, and also noted J.Z. Smith’s
assertion that religion can be defined in over fifty ways. It is a
conversation we are all familiar with. But on the other hand, we all
have an internal definition of religion, a Justice-Potter-Stewart-like
gut feeling that when we look at something claiming to be a religion, we
know what it is when we see it."
Read more here: source
Another article on Yeezianity and Humanism, here
Read more here: source
Another article on Yeezianity and Humanism, here
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Kendrick Lamar and Theology
"More than literary, “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City” qualifies as deeply
theological. At times, “Good Kid” even seems to sing a contemporary
“Confessions.” Lamar differs from Augustine in many respects (Lamar
offers no apology for torture, and he leaves much more room for sexual love.)
But like Augustine, Lamar crafts a narrative of sin, grace, friendship,
and conversion in a particular time and place. Lamar’s “The Art of Peer Pressure” works like Augustine’s incident of the stolen pears, for example.
In some ways, I think Lamar even surpasses Augustine: in addition to confessing his own sins, Lamar also offers a structural critique. All throughout, Lamar confesses his sins–for example, in “Swimming Pools,” he explores the perils, pleasures, and pathos of the human appetite for alcohol. In another track, he laments, “I am a sinner who’s probably going to sin again; Lord forgive me, Lord forgive me.” While confessing his personal sins, Lamar demonstrates that, for young black girls and boys, adolescent folly is no child’s play. When they make mistakes, they are much more likely to get not slapped on the wrist but killed or sent to prison.
Sometimes, as depicted in his video for the love song “Poetic Justice,” they are cut down for no reason at all."
Read the rest @ Women in Theology
Tracklist:
1. Sherane 0:00
2. Bitch Dant Kill My Vibe 4:33
3. Backstreet Freestyle 9:44
4. The art of Peer Pressure 13:17
5. Money Trees ft Jay Rock 18:41
6. Poetic Justice ft Drake 25:08
7. Good Kid 30:08
8. Maad City 33:42
9. Swimming Pools 39:33
10. Sing About Me 44:46
11. Real 56:50
12. Compton 1:04:15
13. Recipe 1:08:22
14. Black Boy Fly 1:14:15
15. Now or Never 1:18:54
In some ways, I think Lamar even surpasses Augustine: in addition to confessing his own sins, Lamar also offers a structural critique. All throughout, Lamar confesses his sins–for example, in “Swimming Pools,” he explores the perils, pleasures, and pathos of the human appetite for alcohol. In another track, he laments, “I am a sinner who’s probably going to sin again; Lord forgive me, Lord forgive me.” While confessing his personal sins, Lamar demonstrates that, for young black girls and boys, adolescent folly is no child’s play. When they make mistakes, they are much more likely to get not slapped on the wrist but killed or sent to prison.
Sometimes, as depicted in his video for the love song “Poetic Justice,” they are cut down for no reason at all."
Read the rest @ Women in Theology
Tracklist:
1. Sherane 0:00
2. Bitch Dant Kill My Vibe 4:33
3. Backstreet Freestyle 9:44
4. The art of Peer Pressure 13:17
5. Money Trees ft Jay Rock 18:41
6. Poetic Justice ft Drake 25:08
7. Good Kid 30:08
8. Maad City 33:42
9. Swimming Pools 39:33
10. Sing About Me 44:46
11. Real 56:50
12. Compton 1:04:15
13. Recipe 1:08:22
14. Black Boy Fly 1:14:15
15. Now or Never 1:18:54
Monday, January 27, 2014
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Friday, January 24, 2014
'Refocusing and Redefining Hip Hop'
"Out of the dust and ashes from apartment buildings burning in the streets of the
Bronx, New York, among the disenfranchised Black and Hispanic youth rose Hip Hop.
Hip Hop provided an identity and a voice to the voiceless; therefore, the exclusion of
certain voices in contemporary Hip Hop is antithetical to the genre’s foundation.
Particularly, the voices of Christians in Hip Hop, whose focus is to make God famous,
are rarely included in discussions by academic and Hip Hop communities. On
September 4, 2012, Lecrae Moore released Gravity, his sixth studio album. Gravity
debuted as the number one bestselling album on the overall iTunes chart and number
three on the Billboards 200 chart. "
read more + full article: here @ Rhetoric Race and Religion
read more + full article: here @ Rhetoric Race and Religion
'Yeezianity' and Humanism
"Its website declares
Yeezianity “THE BEST CHURCH OF ALL TIME!!!!!” Like any good religion,
it has several pillars of the faith (“Money is unnecessary except as a
means of exchange”) and rules about “Our Savior,” which include never
speaking his real name and calling him only Yeezus. But it would appear
Kanye West is the greatest savior our world never had.
In a recent interview with VICE, the (anonymous) founder of this religion that worships Kanye West said that Yeezianity was not for real:
“I believe in what it is, and that’s real. But is there a real organized religion behind it? There is not.”
The founder goes on to say that Yeezianity is “just a rehashing Christianity,” with Kanye West taking the place of Jesus. He extols Kanye’s virtues as a creative genius, calling him “the most honest person in our culture.” Okay, perhaps. I’m inclined to disagree, but that’s a fair opinion to have. But the strange thing about this (okay, one of the strange things) is that Yeezianity, as The Week’s Peter Weber points out, is just another strain of humanism."
via Rhetoric Race and Religion
read the full article here
In a recent interview with VICE, the (anonymous) founder of this religion that worships Kanye West said that Yeezianity was not for real:
“I believe in what it is, and that’s real. But is there a real organized religion behind it? There is not.”
The founder goes on to say that Yeezianity is “just a rehashing Christianity,” with Kanye West taking the place of Jesus. He extols Kanye’s virtues as a creative genius, calling him “the most honest person in our culture.” Okay, perhaps. I’m inclined to disagree, but that’s a fair opinion to have. But the strange thing about this (okay, one of the strange things) is that Yeezianity, as The Week’s Peter Weber points out, is just another strain of humanism."
via Rhetoric Race and Religion
read the full article here
Its
website declares Yeezianity “THE BEST CHURCH OF ALL TIME!!!!!” Like any
good religion, it has several pillars of the faith (“Money is
unnecessary except as a means of exchange”) and rules about “Our
Savior,” which include never speaking his real name and calling him only
Yeezus. But it would appear Kanye West is the greatest savior our world
never had. - See more at:
http://lauraturner.religionnews.com/2014/01/22/yeezianity-and-humanism/#sthash.zurjaScC.dpuf
Its
website declares Yeezianity “THE BEST CHURCH OF ALL TIME!!!!!” Like any
good religion, it has several pillars of the faith (“Money is
unnecessary except as a means of exchange”) and rules about “Our
Savior,” which include never speaking his real name and calling him only
Yeezus. But it would appear Kanye West is the greatest savior our world
never had. - See more at:
http://lauraturner.religionnews.com/2014/01/22/yeezianity-and-humanism/#sthash.zurjaScC.dpuf
Its
website declares Yeezianity “THE BEST CHURCH OF ALL TIME!!!!!” Like any
good religion, it has several pillars of the faith (“Money is
unnecessary except as a means of exchange”) and rules about “Our
Savior,” which include never speaking his real name and calling him only
Yeezus. But it would appear Kanye West is the greatest savior our world
never had. - See more at:
http://lauraturner.religionnews.com/2014/01/22/yeezianity-and-humanism/#sthash.zurjaScC.dpuf
Graffiti on Box Trucks in NY
"A ubiquitous sight throughout large cities like New York, the graffiti covered box truck has inherited the all-city art mantle from the subway train cars of thirty years ago with eye-popping collaborations and solo pieces rolling on rubber wheels and circulating through every neighborhood."
read full article and more pictures here
Thursday, January 23, 2014
C215
"While researching for my new book Viral Art,
I conducted about 50 interviews with artists, curators, photographers
and writers. Most were done in person or over Skype, but a handful were
conducted via email. Only a handful of what came out in those interviews
made it into the book, so now I want to publish a few of those email
interviews in full here on Vandalog. In these extended interviews, you
can probably see even more clearly than in Viral Art how I unashamedly
ask leading questions, and the topics jump around a lot, but hopefully
they are still interesting."
read the rest here
read the rest here
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
House Party in Manhatten
"A little more than 40 (mostly) Street Artists brought the four floor
former tenement building to life one last time before it will be
destroyed – and they did it almost entirely in secret over the course of
a week. Just how secret this event was is debatable considering the
multitude of blog posts and photos of it that appeared in the days
following but in the Internet age, news about stuff like this goes viral
no matter what."
more pictures here
more pictures here
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Thursday, January 16, 2014
TJ Mizell - J Train to Marcy (DJ set on the subway)
"Jam Master Jay’s turntablist son, TJ Mizell, has uploaded a tribute to Jay Z to YouTube.
Titled ‘J Train to Marcy’, the video revolves around a short DJ set by Mizell on the New York Subway, starting from Mizell and his team trying to get electricity from a car battery, and concluding with a routine of Jay Z remixes as the train pulls into Marcy Avenue. It’s really cool – especially the reaction from the bemused commuters – and can be watched above."
source
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Nas Hip Hop Fellowship at Harvard
Hiphop At Harvard from ammunition on Vimeo.
source
"Street knowledge continues to amaze the scholars. Despite dropping out of the eighth grade, Nas has been honored by Harvard University with the Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellowship. The program will fund and enrich artists and scholars with connections to hip-hop."
source
"Herbie Hancock appointed Harvard Professor of Poetry"
"US musician Herbie Hancock has been appointed the 2014 Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University.
...
His series of talks will include The Wisdom of Miles Davis, in reference to the legendary jazz musician, with whom Hancock played, during the 1960s."
source
Herbie Hancock can be attributed to have introduced the "scratch" to a broader audience through the track, 'Rockit'. More specifically, he featured Grandmixer DST who was the artist behind the sound. Many influential DJs today like Mixmaster Mike and DJ Q-bert first heard the scratch on the song.
see the live version here
$650,000 for a Banksy
Chris Martin of Coldplay recently purchased this slab of wood with Banksy's heart-shaped balloon. The piece was purchased at Sean Penn's Help Haiti Home Gala.
source
Monday, January 13, 2014
Rick Ross v. Rick Ross
From Rap Radar:
"Name Game. Rapper Rick Ross was allowed to keep his alias after successfully defeating former drug lord, Freeway Rick Ross in a California appeals court. Freeway filed a lawsuit in 2010 claiming infringement on his namesake. According to Judge Roger Boren however, Rozay was protected under the first amendment.
“We recognize that Roberts’ work — his music and persona as a rap musician — relies to some extent on plaintiff’s name and persona. Roberts chose to use the name ‘Rick Ross.’ He raps about trafficking in cocaine and brags about his wealth. These were ‘raw materials’ from which Roberts’ music career was synthesized. But these are not the ‘very sum and substance’ of Roberts’ work.”
“Roberts created a celebrity identity, using the name Rick Ross, of a cocaine kingpin turned rapper. He was not simply an impostor seeking to profit solely off the name and reputation of Rick Ross. Rather, he made music out of fictional tales of dealing drugs and other exploits—some of which related to plaintiff. Using the name and certain details of an infamous criminal’s life as basic elements, he created original artistic work. "
source
"Name Game. Rapper Rick Ross was allowed to keep his alias after successfully defeating former drug lord, Freeway Rick Ross in a California appeals court. Freeway filed a lawsuit in 2010 claiming infringement on his namesake. According to Judge Roger Boren however, Rozay was protected under the first amendment.
“We recognize that Roberts’ work — his music and persona as a rap musician — relies to some extent on plaintiff’s name and persona. Roberts chose to use the name ‘Rick Ross.’ He raps about trafficking in cocaine and brags about his wealth. These were ‘raw materials’ from which Roberts’ music career was synthesized. But these are not the ‘very sum and substance’ of Roberts’ work.”
“Roberts created a celebrity identity, using the name Rick Ross, of a cocaine kingpin turned rapper. He was not simply an impostor seeking to profit solely off the name and reputation of Rick Ross. Rather, he made music out of fictional tales of dealing drugs and other exploits—some of which related to plaintiff. Using the name and certain details of an infamous criminal’s life as basic elements, he created original artistic work. "
source
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Graffiti in Cuzco, Peru
"Grafitti is an expressipon of many youths. More and more are trying their hand at it in order to express themselves and protest the many injustices they see around them. To make graffiti is to do art. It is to take your thoughts and ideas and create an images that communicates them and that gives a message."
The article features graffiti artists, Victor Juanico Venero, in Cuzco.
Source
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Objectification in Street Art
"As street art has gone mainstream, its popularity has birthed an
industry that capitalizes on its pop culture status. Demographically
targeted goods from custom graffiti paints to clothes have seen an
enormous upswing in the past decade. Far from its modest origins as an
illegal art form, street art more often finds itself sponsored by
corporations looking to broaden their niche appeal and to cash in on the
massively swollen “subculture” that it has given birth to. The
culmination of this is the interaction between the fashion industry and
the “hot” street artists willing to basically license their brand in
order to cash in.
...
Streets artists working in this medium need to take a deeper look at the content of their creations. Given some introspection and forethought, one comes to see that the use of fashion imagery is like a cancer spreading inside of a once independent subculture. Rotting away the core of its value by co-opting its aesthetic techniques in order to market products via the continual appropriation of youth culture that has so long fed the fashion industry. The truth is that these corporations have stolen and co-opted street art and are selling it back to young artists at a retail markup."
Read the full article here
...
Streets artists working in this medium need to take a deeper look at the content of their creations. Given some introspection and forethought, one comes to see that the use of fashion imagery is like a cancer spreading inside of a once independent subculture. Rotting away the core of its value by co-opting its aesthetic techniques in order to market products via the continual appropriation of youth culture that has so long fed the fashion industry. The truth is that these corporations have stolen and co-opted street art and are selling it back to young artists at a retail markup."
Read the full article here
Friday, January 10, 2014
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson certainly didn't invent the "moonwalk" (which is really called the "backslide"). Some of the earliest representations can be traced back to 1955 with Bill Bailey. Nevertheless, Michael Jackson is credited with popularizing the dance move and probably the one associated with it. He has been a source of inspiration for many dancers in the hip hop world and many of his signature moves and styles can be seen in many dancers today.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
'Hip Hop Speaks to Children'
more here
"Hip hop, like poetry, encompasses everything about the human experience. It’s easy to forget that hip hop was born using creativity to improve circumstances. When slaves were prevented from learning to read and write, they used coded drumbeats to communicate. Gospel preachers refined the call and response as a means to educate and embed God’s word into people’s minds. Blues musicians turned the repeated cadence into the 20th century’s most influential music form. The first hip hop artists, inner-city kids, put all of these together and didn’t let a lack of resources stop their creativity."
Monday, January 6, 2014
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Friday, January 3, 2014
"Drunken Style" Project Prepix Asia Freestyle session
Project Prepix Asia: an international crew comprised of members from Korea, Japan, Germany and the United States.
more info here
more info here
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Its The Real - Jews for Jesus Piece
Rap has assimilated well into comedic pieces. Came across this video recently which takes that comedic element and crosses into the 'Religion and Hip Hop' category.
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