Death of Autotune or Death of Hip Hop?
Alright, I've been thinking about this for the last few weeks as I've been rewinding the hell out of Jay Z's latest and I want to get a couple things out of the way from the jump. 1) Autotune is hella overused and...
What the Fuck? Michael Jackson is dead.
Alright, this is depressing as fuck. I first heard the news as a rumor between two cats outside the corner store about 4 hours ago on my way downtown. "Yo, you heard Michael Jackson died?" "Naw, man I heard that was just a rumor." A small lump in my stomach started to...
Music+Tech+Crumbling Industry=We’re not sure yet, but it’s gonna be cool!
Right now the music biz is living somewhere between the Blade Runner future and the Kitty Hawk past. On one side we're at the dawn of a new tech age and battles to determine the shape of what's to come are being waged on all levels-from the indie foot soldiers pushing...
Young, Gifted, Black and Avant Garde
This is already snowballing into something bigger. I woke up this morning to the usual coffee, smokes and words and an article I'd been meaning to get to for a while. Back in March, over at Esther Ivereem's excellent Seeing Black site, black American experimental...
Literature 2.0? It’s about damned time
When Mark Amerika created Grammatron 16 (?) years ago, who knew it would take the rest of the world so long to catch up? Still, you have no idea how exited this article in the NYT makes me-enough to get me blogging again after umpteen months. It's always annoyed the...
Cultural Criticism 2.0?
So in my previous post I wondered about the death of Cult. Crit. as posed in this piece from the SA Times. It's an interesting article but the more I think about it, and with the help of some smart journo friends, I really have to wonder just which medium the author...
Fuck Cultural Criticism?
Came across an interesting article in the South African Times this morning and thought I'd share. A bit of a bitch session but hell, what criticism doesn't fall into that category at least a bit. The article goes over subject matter we've all heard before but struck...
A Prince in MC’s clothing
"You've seen the slogan, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution" alongside renderings of the late Emma Goldman plastered on the T-Shirts and bumper stickers of progressives and liberals from here to Cuba. And while it's doubtful that the famous...
New Poem: Fire Sciences
This is a poem that I've been working on for a while-an introduction to a new series. The idea for "The Fuckers" series was taken from "The Vandals" poems written by Alan Michael Parker and ideally is a way to use poetry to talk about all the things that I usually...
Lost, Found and Famous-Ledisi takes Center Stage
Lost, Found and Famous (Published on Oakbook.com 2007) By Kwan Booth A year ago, trying to get an interview with former Oakland songbird Ledisi would have been as simple as picking up the phone and dialing the same 510 phone number she's had since 1995. Let's say that...
