I’m violating one of my bylaws for this space since I’ve already covered it in print, but Blaq Poet’s Tha Blaqprint is out today on DJ Premier’s Year Round Records and, dammit, that’s my record of the week. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve avoided writing a proper M.J. post (this notwithstanding) ’til now for one simple reason. I prefer to use my writing to illuminate what is not well known or present viewpoints that are not well represented. With the whole world simultaneously eulogizing Mike in every way imaginable, that just did not seem possible.
Yet it doesn’t seem appropriate to avoid the subject. I was born in 1979, the year of Off The Wall. My earliest, foggy memories come right in late ‘82, early ‘83—you know, Thriller times. My first concert, in July 1984, was the Jacksons’ Victory Tour. Now, these are by no means unique experiences. But, for someone who never tried to sing or dance, Mike’s influence on the direction of my life was profound. See, I was the original MTV kid. As one of the first families in my neighborhood with cable in the early ’80s, our house was regularly visited by our teenage neighbors, who would come over specifically to view the channel. Beginning at the age of four, watching hours of music videos became just as much a part of my daily routine as Sesame Street. As a result, I absorbed pop music more intensely and thoroughly then many other kids, beginning right around the time of Michael’s breakthrough onto MTV in ‘83 with “Billie Jean.” Read the rest of this entry »
I interviewed photographer Camilo Jose Vergara in early 2007 for this brief piece in XLR8R magazine. In light of my recent post about his Harlem 1970-2009 exhibition, I thought I would post the interview I did with him then in its entirety.
What is it about American cities that draws you to document them versus, say, ghettos in other places like your native Chile?
Here is where I live. I can’t just take the bus and go to Mexico. After a while you become interested in what’s around you. India is fascinating but it’s do damn far. What can you start there? First of all, you have to learn the language. Here at least, with some trouble I understand what folks are telling me. There are some places, like parts of Chicago, where it’s almost like a foreign language but you still can understand. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week I took the woman (semi-)uptown and caught Harlem 1970-2009, an exhibition of work by my favorite photographer, Camilo Jose Vergara, at the New York Historical Society. You’ll never hear your trendy art friends mention his name, but Vergara, a 65-year-old Chile native who’s worked out of Harlem since the ’70s, is doing some of the most unique and valuable work of any visual artist working today. Returning to the same sites in troubled urban (”ghetto”) areas year after year, Vergara documents their decline, decay, rebirth, further decay, whatever. The story told by his Harlem photos is more complex than that, as his recent images of the area document not only gentrification but pockets of remaining poverty and decay as well as the clearance of vibrant (if damaged) areas in the name of progress. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’ve ever spent any time in Central Brooklyn, you’re surely familiar with dollar vans. At any given moment, there must be 1,000 of these underground commuter vehicles riding lower Flatbush Avenue alone. Like this dude said, if Flatbush had a Hall of Fame, the dollar van—which now cost $2, by the way—would probably be the first inductee. The other day, while doing some research for an article I’m writing, I came across “Dollar Van Demos,” a new Youtube channel that gives unnown rappers, singers and chatters an opportunity to prove themselves before a captive audience of dollar van riders.
While the typical dollar van passenger is a West Indian man or woman on his/her way to work, a lot of the folks in these seem to be friends or fellow artists. But in others, like the one for this Asher Roth A-alike’s grating anti-gentrification screed, the responses of apparently real passengers— see grandma feeling it at 1:53, and headphones girl definitely not feeling it at 2:32—are what make the videos worth watching. Read the rest of this entry »
For all of its other sins against humanity and common decency, MTV has a long-running track record of giving extremely offbeat and ingenious comedy shows unlikely mass exposure. The State is still the greatest sketch show of all-time in my mind and, say what you will about him now, but Tom Green was the truth when he first showed up. The most recent (and possibly last) beneficiary of this quirk in the MTV agenda was The Andy Milonakis Show, which began airing in 2005, around the same time as the even stranger but slightly less sublime Wonder Showzen, before disappearing two years ago.
Milonakis’ obsession with annoying the elderly never ceased to crack me up. So I’m not mad at his recent re-emergence as an unlikely mascot of sorts for Diplo and Switch’s new dancehall project, Major Lazer. Read the rest of this entry »
With all apologies to Snoop, DJ Quik is having the most entertaining career evolution of any ’90s G-Funk holdover. (Not that too many of these guys are having third acts). While the general perception out there might be that he’s “washed up,” Compton’s finest ghostwriter-less MC/producer has been making great music throughout the current decade, from his oddball freelance production work (“Addictive,” that genius ‘02 track wasted on one of the world’s worst singers, Truth Hurts, yet saved by the brilliant Rakim cameo; The Black Album’s “Justify My Thug”) to his intensely personal, criminally overlooked ‘05 LP, Trauma. Read the rest of this entry »
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble has a new album out. Not that you’d know it if you don’t live in England. The only stateside acknowledgment of the self-titled LP (on Damon Albarn’s Honest Jon’s label) that I could find through Google News was this excellent piece on Phil Cohran’s sons by Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker. In a perfect world, this outstanding record by New York’s best street performers would be greeted with the enthusiasm that the music press has lately reserved for the band Grizzly Bear (Side note: I tried listening to their album on some see-what-the-hype-is-about shit, and it’s unbearably unlistenable). Since folks are sleeping, and I didn’t get an opportunity to write this record up in print (I interviewed the band for this very abbreviated piece in Time Out last year; if I hadn’t lost the full transcript in a data meltdown, I’d drop it here) I’ma use this space to break down why you need to get familiar. Read the rest of this entry »
Lee Fields has an album out today (well, yesterday) and it’s damn near perfect. My World (on Truth and Soul, a great label that deserves a lot more praise and attention than it gets) was four-plus years in the making, and it was worth the wait. I’m smitten with “Money is King,” which sounds like it could be a circa ‘73 blaxploitation theme (think “Across 110th Street” or JB’s heavy-hearted work on the Black Caesar soundtrack—”The Boss,” “Down and Out in New York City,” et. al) and “Ladies,” a breezy track about checking out women outside in the summertime… but, really, each track is better than the next. Read the rest of this entry »
