Monday, September 10th, 2007

The Funniest Piece Yet On YeCent/50West

From our man Jay to the Smooth…

What will you do tomorrow?

posted by @ 7:45 am | 3 Comments

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

The Other Shoe Drops For DJ Drama

SOHH.com reports that Universal’s release of a legal mixtape by DJ Bear (who?) have only sold 5,800 units at cut-out prices since being released a month ago.

Drama responded, “How ironic. I guess they’ve realized just how important mixtapes are.””

The legal mixtape thing, of course, is hardly new. But there’s good reporting in this piece…

+ A UME exec admits they don’t have any, uh, clue…and

+ Retailers are like, whatever, next.

posted by @ 11:41 am | 1 Comment

Monday, August 13th, 2007

B-Boying & Hip-Hop Theatre In The NY Times :: How History Gets Distorted

I’m way past the point of being excited by seeing hip-hop dance in a place like the Times, but this piece is notable.

It tries to account for the global sophistication of b-boy/b-girl competitions in talking about the rise of South Korean b-boys and their journey into evening-length works. It also touches on Benson Lee’s fantastic new movie Planet B-Boy, which captures a year in the life of Thomas Hergenrother’s essential Battle of The Year, an event that is beginning to look like the b-boy/b-girl World Cup. Trac 2 also gets a strong mention in the piece.

At the same time, it’s waaaaaaay off the mark in terms of looking at how b-boy has moved to the theatre stage. “Battle of the Year is largely responsible for the trend toward longer, more artful works featuring characters and plot,” the author, Julie Bloom, writes.

WRONG.

The transformation of hip-hop dance into narrative theatre is a history that has been recounted thoroughly by Jorge POPMASTER FABEL Pabon in Total Chaos, as well as in this long piece I did on Rennie Harris and his group Puremovement. (PDF download)

Bloom even contradicts the Times’ own dance critics, who have been covering hip-hop dance theatre since the Rhythm Technicians took to the stage at PS 122 in 1991 with the acclaimed play “So What Happens Now?”, years before BOTY’s competition expanded beyond Europe. (That play could also be said to be the birth of hip-hop theatre itself.)

This is not at all a slight to BOTY’s influence on global b-boying/b-girling, which has been HUGE. It’s simply to say that Bloom overstates the case drastically, and there are effects.

This is not an incidental point. As many pioneer dancers remind me, part of the reason hip-hop dance remains the least understood of the original four elements is because few people really care to get their facts right. Many see this as a campaign to erase and deracinate hip-hop’s origins. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don’t. But the effect can be the same.

So mad props, love, and respect to the German and South Korean massive for continuing to expand and change the game. But I’m sure even they would tell you that the history isn’t always what it’s made out to be by the mainstream media.

posted by @ 8:23 am | 10 Comments

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

July Rains + The Bad News A’s

Normally in the Bay, there’s no rain in July and no last place in July either. But today we’re looking at both. Welcome to One Of Those Years. Even the faithful are losing faith.

It’s almost enough to make one feel sorry for the Yankees. Almost.

“Bronx Is Burning” is getting better.

Zito actually won.

Back to work.

posted by @ 9:00 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

Global Images :: Brasilintime in LA Times + Bling on DVD

Fantastic piece by Lynell George on Brasilintime in the LA Times. Check the opening graph…brilliant newswriting.

BTW just got word today that Raquel Cepeda’s film Bling: A Planet Rock, a film on hip-hop and the Sierra Leone diamond trade featuring Paul Wall and Raekwon that aired earlier this year on VH1 will be out in her essential director’s cut DVD this September. Another brilliant project that is a powerful must-see.

posted by @ 5:20 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007

Barefiles Is Back

Dubsteppas rejoice! Check here.

posted by @ 9:10 am | 0 Comments

Monday, June 18th, 2007

Matt Birkhold on Hip-Hop and Patriarchy

Great piece in WireTap Magazine today by Matt Birkhold:

By the end of the 2005 Feminism and Hip-Hop Conference, it was clear that hip-hop was central to the identities of many people present. After Joan Morgan, author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, said that hip-hop as she knew it was dead, many audience members grew visibly upset. They were further angered when Black Noise author Tricia Rose said that, because the music had internalized capitalism and misogyny, it was time to let hip-hop go.

The intellectual conflict between those angered by Rose and Morgan and those who were not was apparent during a panel that included video model Melyssa Ford and video director Jessy Terrero. Ford argued that there wasn’t a problem with her portrayal in videos because she was in control of her image. Terrero stressed that women were portrayed in videos in a manner that guaranteed profit for both the director and the label.

Terrero’s “sex sells” position was interrogated during the question-and-answer period, when Tricia Rose asked panel participants, “If having the Klan come through your video and lynch black folks is going to make you money, are you going to do it?” Terrero responded “No.” Rose followed up by saying, “We have drawn a line with race. When will we draw a line in regards to gender?” Terrero responded evasively (and elicited applause) by saying that if education were better, viewers would be equipped to make informed viewing choices and women dancing in videos would peruse other options.

Terrero’s response is problematic because it indicates an unwillingness to take responsibility for the sexist images he creates which are then televised around the country to a market that awaits subhuman, hypersexual images of black women. The crowd’s approval demonstrates their unwillingness to hold him accountable and also illustrates that they too would rather engage in a conversation concerning the failures of education than discuss the ways in which hip-hop has internalized patriarchy and sexism.

This squares with my recollection of the event as well.

A small sidenote: in Ms. Morgan’s defense, I’ve been on several panels with her since the 2005 conference. She taught a class on hip-hop journalism this past spring at Duke, and has told her students and her audiences her personal truth, which is that she no longer is as passionate a hip-hop fan as when she was in her 20s. I think she might say that, even though she said what she said at the University of Chicago, she certainly doesn’t believe hip-hop is dead.

posted by @ 1:22 pm | 3 Comments

Friday, June 15th, 2007

USA TODAY: Can rap regain its crown?

Cover story on USA TODAY: Can rap regain its crown?

Response from Hip-Hop World: Yawn.

posted by @ 8:09 am | 12 Comments

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

For Lovers (Of Art and Democracy)

So you say you were a lover–before this war? Fall in love again Friday night at the Picture Progress 2007 event tomorrow night in San Francisco. Serious art (Judy Chicago?!) and serious change will be afoot to benefit some of our favoritest hellraisers at the the League of Young Voters.

posted by @ 10:04 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

Eric Arnold :: Hyphy Not Dead Yet!

The debate over whether hyphy is dead continues, with Eric Arnold weighing in on the subject in The Chron. Here’s an excerpt including my mane D-Sharp:

Take Super Hyphy 17, an all-ages, alcohol-free event held Memorial Day weekend at Petaluma’s Phoenix Theater. That’s where about 1,000 youngsters of various ethnicities went dumb, shook their dreads and made thizz faces all night to live performances by Mistah F.A.B., Zion-I & the Grouch, the Pack, Haji Springer, J-Billion, J. Diggs and other local acts.

A palpable surge of energy moved through the crowd when the DJ spun the late Mac Dre’s now-classic 2002 anthem “Thizzelle Dance”; live renditions of recent hits like the Pack’s “Vans,” Zion-I’s “The Bay” and F.A.B.’s “Kicked Out Da Club” were greeted with equal exuberance. Though the tightly packed crowd was “in the building and feeling itself,” as they say, the negatives associated with hyphy were absent — there were no fights, no gunshots and nobody spinning doughnuts after the show.

“Is hyphy over? Not in Petaluma,” said concert promoter D-Sharp, looking around at a hall full of excited youngsters sporting multicolored hoodies, special-edition Oakland A’s hats, shiny grill pieces, Thizz Fo Life T-shirts and the oversize sunglasses — called “stunna shades” — which have become ubiquitous to hyphy culture.

Backstage, even more of the culture was on display, much of it emanating from Mistah F.A.B. The 25-year-old Oakland native who’s become hyphy’s official spokesman held court, dressed in a brightly colored airbrushed T-shirt bearing his likeness and sporting a matching bejeweled chain.

“How can hyphy be dead? They ain’t seen hyphy yet,” F.A.B. insists

posted by @ 5:07 am | 2 Comments



Previous Posts

Feed Me!

Revolutions

Word

Fiyahlinks


twitter_logo

@zentronix

Come follow me now...

Archives

We work with the Creative Commons license and exercise a "Some Rights Reserved" policy. Feel free to link, distribute, and share written material from cantstopwontstop.com for non-commercial uses.

Requests for commercial uses of any content here are welcome: come correct.

Creative Commons License