Tag: Hip Hop
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Common Reveals Hip Hop’s Lost Soul
The beautifully close cropped faces staring into the camera for Common’s latest video for Black America Again dare the viewer to look each subject directly in the eye. Their gaze is strong, inquisitive and evocative; you quickly get the sense that their gaze is knowingly somehow directed at you, challenging you to see them as complex individuals with unique stories,…
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Stand on the Word: TGIF Edition
….and Disco begat breaks… While Larry Levan didn’t make this track, he made it known. TGIF! Go get your life.
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The Let Down: Netflix’s Ambitious Take on the Birth of Hip Hop Falls Flat
The 2015 Netflix trailer for the Get Down gave us a glimpse of 1970’s New York and the birth of hip hop with the fire and drama you would expect from a Baz Luhrmann production. When the show launched August 12, they managed to deliver on lush cinematography, stunning style and familiar hip hop samples, but well after an…
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What I’m Listening To: the Proto Disco Edition
Here’s some music for your Saturday. Love this mix of amazing songs from the early days of disco, Proto Disco. If this doesn’t get your day off on the right foot I don’t know what will. 🙂 Enjoy!
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Unmentionables: Zoë Buckman at Papillion
Peering through a gallery window at lingerie hanging from the ceiling made me feel like a voyeur. Catching a glimpse of Papillion while closed was probably the best way to experience their latest exhibit by Zoë Buckman called Every Curve. In this body of work the artist explores the polarities between feminism and hip hop and the cultural dynamics of both existing within…
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My Mourning of Synergy: The Legacy of Phife & a Tribe Called Quest
When De La Soul “officially” came on the scene with “3 Feet High and Rising” in the spring of 1989, I was in High School walking a not so fine line between my obsession with new wave synth pop and my love for rap (frankly I jumped between worlds), but when “Me Myself and I”…
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Seeing Double at MOCA
Kahlil Joseph: Double Conscience It’s a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” ~ W.E.B Du Bois For me, a great litmus test for a good piece of…
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Sat. Sounds: The Abstract and the Dragon
We have Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip for bringing us an early Christmas present this week. Busta and Tip are giving fans a taste of something new to whet our appetite in anticipation of new albums expected by both artists in 2014. On Thursday when the rest of the world was fawning over Beyoncé’s release, the…
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Lost and Found: The Lost Scrolls of James Yancey, aka J Dilla
There’s nothing like Saturday story telling as told by NPR. Snap Judgement is a show that explores those instinctual decisions people make that have the potential to change lives. They have outdone themselves with this amazing story of the discovery of a man’s hidden treasure that exposes the dual economic ravages of the healthcare and…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 