Elvis Has Left The Building
When Vanilla Ice came out back in 1990, a few of us were sure that hip-hop was dead. “Well, that’s it,” I said, packing up my metaphorical office. “It was fun while it lasted.” There would be no room for Black hip-hop artists on the charts now — no matter how progressive, no matter how […]
The Bridge to Gretna
It is the ugliest incident of the entire New Orleans debacle. As the city descended into chaos and squalor in the days following the hurricane, 200 people from New Orleans — mostly Black — were told by police to cross the Greater New Orleans Bridge over the Mississippi River on foot. There, police told them, […]
Slum Clearance, The Natural Way
Here’s the thing about Katrina that few are talking about. When the New Orleans basin is finally drained, and most of the ramshackle structures that make up the housing stock in the poorest areas are marked for demolition, does anyone in their right mind think that the majority of New Orleans citizens will have an […]
Hooray for Kanye
So he’s a bit of a whiner. A tad full of himself, maybe? Crying, as they say, with two loaves of bread under his arm? Who cares. As of today, this kid is officially my hero. Last week, he steps out on that shakiest of limbs in hip-hop to stand against homophobes.Then, two days ago, […]
THE UNBEARABLE WHITENESS OF BEING
I remember the day I decided to kill whitey. It was a late spring afternoon in 1981, and everybody in my 8th grade class was restless with the coming of summer. So the teachers opened up the shared area between the classrooms, turned down the lights, and let the kids spin records and dance. Columbia, […]