Meet My New Girlfriend

She dissed me in high school. Then, when I was in college, she changed her mind. She caught the vapors. But by then, I had found someone new. So I passed her by. I don’t regret it. But I always wondered how it would have been if I hadn’t. I met her again recently. We’d […]

Minding My Business – Part Three

[The conclusion of a three part series] Hip-hop is where it is today, and looks the way it does today — not because of a diabolical conspiracy — but largely because of its own success, its own mainstreaming. Hip-hop once existed in isolation, in a political and cultural incubator (one that allowed for Native Tongues, […]

Minding My Business – Part Two

[A continuation of a previous entry] In the early 90s when two white Pop radio programmers did what hundreds of their Black counterparts at Urban radio were unwilling to do — program hip-hop aggressively — they shared a quite unexpected consequence. Keith Naftaly and Rick Cummings suddenly became the voice of young people of color. […]