Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005

To MFA Or Not To MFA?

Easing out of vacation back into real life with this piece on the value of an MFA in yesterday’s SF Chronicle Magazine:

Each year, 2,000-3,000 writers (!!!) emerge with freshly minted MFAs, turning out submissions to journals, publishers and agents. The Del Mar-based Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, which has shepherded a stable of renowned writers to literary success, receives hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts each week.

After years of experience wading through the slush pile of submissions, Dijkstra — a former university professor with a Ph.D. in French literature — discerned that MFA programs can foster “well-written but sterile work.” But there’s also a practical upside: Dijkstra pays more attention when she sees an MFA on the resume…

posted by @ 9:56 am | 3 Comments

Monday, August 8th, 2005

Sizzla Signs To Dame Dash Label


Photo by the legendary Afflicted!

Just received this press release, re: Sizzla. Old “New Roots” fan that I am (and I am still hoping for an Ini Kamoze comeback–80s version!), I feel like he’s about 6 or 7 years off his peak. At this point he’s like Prince in the 90s. Lots of output, not a lot of killers.

Diversion: I loved Da Real Thing but it was only 80% of a perfect album. Remember 1997? Black Woman & Child and Praise Ye Jah. That’s like putting out Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint in the same year.

All this said, “Be Strong” was probably the best “Drop Leaf” 7″, and Sizzla’s been playing with hip-hop crossover for about 4 years now (mostly unmemorably). There’s a lot of ways that this marriage makes perfect sense. The main thing will be to pair him with a producer who can inspire and–mainly–edit.

Maybe give Don Corleon the job, and tell him not to come back until he has 12 certifiable bangers. Even if that means spending more than two weeks to actually do an album.

Thing is, general North American audiences won’t be as forgiving as we reggae fans are. We’ll buy every 1 of the 16 Sizzla albums every year, hoping to get maybe 3-5 good tracks. These fools will download the shit with Foxy Brown for free and be like, who’s that Jamaican dude and what’s he yo-oh-yoing about?

Overall, I haven’t had a chance to listen or write about dancehall as much as I would have liked to for the past 2 years, but I’m convinced that this year is going to be a really interesting one. As Buju would say, here why:

-Soca no-names and non-Jamaican neo-dancehall divas are burning up the summer charts.
-You can now hear reggaeton playing in a Mill Valley Baskin & Robbins.

If you count the Caribbean influence on grime and crunk–that latter thing is a debate I’m dying to fire up, but not here–dancehall has conquered hip-hop in death by a thousand hybrids. And yet dancehall artists still might not win. Again, here why:

-Sean Paul’s followup appears to be stalled.
-Baby Cham’s album is still not scheduled.
-Ele and Vybz never caught flight.
-Beenie Man is missing in Aruba.

The question is: did our dancehall heroes do it to themselves, or is everyone else just moving a lot faster?

And now everyone is supposedly talking about roots again. But forgive me, because this is my sound, but I gotta say this: I Wayne is not the real thing, Jah Cure can’t tour for another decade, the Marleys (even those whose mother is not named Rita) always get a free pass from foreign, and all of these dudes have women problems. How long will this last?

More questions for a hot summer day.

REGGAE SUPERSTAR SIZZLA SIGNS TO
DAMON DASH MUSIC GROUP

US TOUR SET TO LAUNCH AUGUST 18;
MAJOR LABEL DEBUT ALBUM SET FOR EARLY ’06

NEW YORK, NY – August 8, 2005 – International reggae superstar Sizzla, one of Jamaica’s most gifted, most prolific, and best-loved artists of the past decade, has signed with the Damon Dash Music Group (DDMG). With over 30 full-length albums released for labels like VP Records, Greensleeves, and Jet Star, and countless 7-inch singles released in his native Jamaica – including last summer’s crossover smash “Just One Of Those Days (Dry Cry)” – his forthcoming DDMG release, set for an early-2006 release, will mark Sizzla’s major-label debut.

What may seem at first a strange musical marriage – Jamaica’s Sizzla, a reclusive, devout Rastafarian and Harlem’s Damon Dash, the brash, outspoken mogul and CEO of DDMG, Sizzla joins an already eclectic DDMG roster including the infamous rapper Beanie Sigel, R&B singers Rell and Nicole Wray, and the legacy of the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

“The signing of Sizzla to the Damon Dash Music group is actually a perfect fit,” explains Dash. “I am an entrepreneur: when I see a market I haven’t yet infiltrated, I’m going after it. Reggae and Caribbean music is a huge international marketplace and, of course, I like the scope of that. Sizzla is unquestionably the genre’s biggest, most talented, most prolific, most important star. I’m looking forward to reaching Sizzla’s already massive fanbase, and more importantly, exposing him to a brand new one. I’m proud and excited to have Sizzla as a new addition to the DDMG family.”
Emerging during the latter half of the ’90s, Sizzla – born Miguel Collins in the rugged August Town area of Kingston – has been one of the leaders of the conscious dancehall movement. Along with veteran acts like Buju Banton and Capleton, and more recently I-Wayne and Damien “Junior Gong” Marley, Sizzla has helped lead dancehall back to the musical and spiritual influence of roots reggae, favoring organic productions and heavily Rastafarian subject matter. Something of an enigma to the public at large, Sizzla has rarely granted interviews and has kept his concert appearances to a minimum. All of that, Dash insists, is about to change.

“When my VP of A&R, Clark Kent, brought Sizzla to me, I didn’t know what to expect. This artist has blown me away. We’re actually very much alike. He’s a workaholic, like me. He’s in the studio every day, recording literally hundreds of songs. He’s not only punctual, he’s actually early for promotional appointments. We’re both respected and accomplished, yet we’re both still hungry.”

Regardless of his public persona, Sizzla has ranked as arguably the most popular conscious reggae artist of his time. From his breakout year of 1997, which saw the release of his critically and publicly-acclaimed second and third albums, Praise Ye Jah and Black Woman & Child – both instant classics – to 2004’s return to form Da Real Thing, Sizzla career-spanning 30-plus albums have amassed a catalogue of anthems beloved by reggae fans everywhere, including “Dry Cry,” “Thank You Mama,” “Solid As a Rock,” “Praise Ye Jah,” “Black Woman & Child,” “Good Ways,” “Holding Firm,” and many, many more.

posted by @ 7:41 am | 39 Comments

Friday, August 5th, 2005

A Convo On Hip-Hop Writing

If you didn’t know already, Tamara Palmer–whose Country-Fried Soul: Adventures in Dirty South Hip-Hop is out now!–and I have been blogging on SOHH.com’s Connect Politic… about hip-hop writing. Check it out and let us know how much we suck. Meanwhile if you have a hip-hop book jones, peep the reading list on the right!

posted by @ 2:39 pm | 2 Comments

Friday, August 5th, 2005

Boogie Down

After a long unexplained absence, your boy is back up at Sticker Shock today–with a long-lost Bronx favorite. Keep tickin’ and tockin’ for a limited time!

posted by @ 7:30 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, August 4th, 2005

Mos Def Calls Out Suge Knight In LA

Finally getting some light on SOHH and The Situation UK is the fact that Mos Def climaxed his concert at the Hollywood Bowl on July 24th by shouting: “Tell them who killed my man (Biggie), Suge. Tell them who killed my man, Suge!”

I was at the concert.

The crowd was shocked at first, but then responded with loud applause. Mos said, “Gotta tell the truth. We fear nothing.”

The concert itself–sandwiched in between performances by the excellent Senegalese rap trio Daara J and an high-energy show by Femi Kuti–was billed as “Biggie, the big band experience”. Mos came out on a bed with neon signs reading “Freedom” and “Oysters” next to it. The concept was to have a jazz band, featuring Will Calhoun, play covers of songs that would trace the story of Biggie’s life.

It was uneven, at best. The band opened with a fascinating cover of “Stakes Is High” and moved through long versions of stuff like “It’s Just Begun”, “Miles Runs The Voodoo Down”, and ended with “Umi Says”. It was loose and unstructured, with Mos dictating changes onstage as the band played, and apparently not a lot of thought given to pacing. When the clock came up on an hour, Mos admitted they had prepared a lot more but they had run out of time.

That’s when he got into the line about Suge.

The song that Mos went into after that had him solo at the piano banging out a two-chord drone in which he sliced together lyrics from “Jam Master Jay” with comments on Biggie’s death. He ended by flipping the classic “Run DMC and Jam Master Jay” into a scream: “Who killed Pac, Biggie and Jay?”

Brave shit. But probably not ready to be recorded yet…

posted by @ 10:19 am | 6 Comments

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005

Jim Farber on The Source


Supply your own caption.

From today’s New York Daily News:

Observers feel the magazine’s spiraling problems mirror a central struggle within hip hop itself. “The roots of the music are very ‘street’,” says Minya Oh, alias Miss Info, Hot 97’s hip-hop gossip. “But that has to get along with its newer role, which is very big business.”

Many industry insiders feel the biggest blow to the magazine’s credibility stems from its two-year war against Eminem, whom the magazine has cast as a racist, out to whitewash an African-American art form. (The Source’s own founder, David Mays, is white.)

“By battling Eminem, they end up battling the whole family he’s down with – 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, Lloyd Banks – the biggest people in the game,” explains Nelson George, a long-time observer of popular music and the author of “Hip-Hop America.” “How can you sustain and not cover those guys?”

“Regular readers really don’t care about the whole back story of the magazine’s problems,” says Oh. “But they do want to know what Eminem is doing on his vacation or what 50 Cent has to say about Vivica Fox.”

To get that information, readers are increasingly flipping over to The Source’s rival, XXL. That upstart mag began eight years ago (The Source kicked off back in 1988). In 2003, the younger mag’s circulation was little more than half that of its role model. Since then, its circulation has increased by more than 10% to an audited figure of 273,257, the overwhelming majority of them moving on newsstands.

“XXL is now the biggest to us,” says a source at Def Jam Records.

posted by @ 6:51 am | 3 Comments

Monday, August 1st, 2005

Judith Miller: No Journalistic Martyr

From Elizabeth Mendez Berry (now a hard-boiled reporter for Time Magazine!): Arianna debunks Judith Miller’s martyrdom–Miller is the source.

posted by @ 9:23 am | 3 Comments

Monday, August 1st, 2005

I Just Want It To Be Over

posted by @ 8:33 am | 2 Comments

Friday, July 29th, 2005

Your Handy Hip-Hop Family Tree + New Quannum Site

Whoa…got this link from Cindy Campbell, courtesy the Tampa Bay Times. Click on “Rap’s family tree”. It reminds me of those old rock band charts folks used to do. Endless fun…

Speaking of which, run over to the new Quannum site. More fun in the new world…

posted by @ 2:47 pm | 2 Comments

Friday, July 29th, 2005

Live From Iraq: TV and Country Versions

What do folks think of “Over There”? I was disturbed by some of the ways the characters fit reality-TV race and gender archetypes, but I’m looking forward to the character development, to the potential humanization of those Bush has put into harm’s way as well as the Iraqi people. Bo’s encounter with the IED was wrenching, probably the closest American TV will ever get to actual uncensored pictures of war. (Props should be given also to MTV’s ongoing specials on young soldiers, Iraqi youth, and the war.) If the character development in Over There proceeds, it could be the best argument media has made yet to end this war.

This meanwhile, from today’s AP newswire:

Soldier in Iraq Records Country-Music Hit
July 29, 2005 1:20 PM EDT
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – His boots battered, his spirits sinking, Luke Stricklin struggled to explain his experiences in Iraq to his family and friends back home who kept asking him what it was like to fight in Baghdad.

“Time calling home was precious,” the soldier said. “That’s the last thing you wanted to talk about. Mom always said I wasn’t telling her the truth, which I wasn’t. I would tell her everything was just fine. Ashley, my wife, couldn’t hear me talk about it. We just talked about anything else.”

He couldn’t speak the words. But he could sing them. He looked at the bottom of his boots one day. The boots he’d worn 12 hours a day for 14 months became the breakthrough.

“Bottom of my boots sure are getting worn,” the 22-year-old Arkansas National Guardsman wrote. “There’s a lot of holes in this faded uniform. Hands are black with dirt and so is my face. Ain’t ever been to hell, but it can’t be any worse than this place.”

He kept on writing, entering lines on his laptop computer or jotting them down in a green waterproof Army-issue notebook he was required to carry while on patrols.

The song became “American by God’s Amazing Grace,” and by the time Stricklin came home from Iraq in March it was on country radio stations from Albuquerque, N.M., to Lima, Ohio, and Lexington, Neb., to Jackson, Tenn.

While writing the lyrics, Stricklin showed them to his Army buddy J.R. Shultz. The two worked out the music and decided to record the song. Stricklin grabbed his $25 guitar – which an Iraqi boy found for him at a Baghdad street market.

“You can’t expect much being over there, but it was good enough. I played the heck out of that thing while I was over there,” said Stricklin, who, on top of the money spent on the guitar, gave the boy a $25 tip for finding it.

The soldiers shut themselves in Shultz’s room in a bombed-out concrete building at their Baghdad camp. They set up the laptop recording software and hooked up a cheap microphone.

“I sat on a five-gallon Igloo water cooler,” Stricklin said. “We called them recording stools.”

With guitar on knee, Stricklin finished the song and e-mailed it home, writing, “Mom, listen to this.”

His mother, Sheila Harrington, said she was excited to see a note from her son, but didn’t expect his creative response to her continuous questions.

“The song started playing and I literally broke down in tears,” she said. “It all came together, the whole scenario of it for me.”

Harrington quickly forwarded the e-mail onto friends and family, but she thought her son’s song deserved a larger audience and she sent a copy to the local Fort Smith radio station. It prompted dozens of requests.

(Stricklin’s song follows Big Neal’s rap album, “Live From Iraq”.)

Upon his return from Iraq four months ago, Stricklin started playing local shows in Fort Smith and before long was on his way to Nashville, Tenn., where he recorded a studio version of the song and his self-titled debut album, due out in September.

Before leaving for Iraq, Stricklin worked in an electric motor shop, but now he’s trying for a full-time music career. Internet chatrooms buzz with talk of him as a rising country star and “American by God’s Amazing Grace” has been released as a single. Stricklin has made appearances on national television and radio shows promoting it.

He hopes for a hit, but his mom is just happy for the lyrics.

“I think I know them by heart,” she said. “I carried the CD with me everyday and listened to it.”

—
Check the website here.

posted by @ 11:21 am | 0 Comments



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