Coming of Age With Hip Hop (part 4.1)
Welcome back for the fourth installment of Coming of Age with Hip Hop. This week, I have the pleasure of tackling one of the biggest years in Hip Hop: 1996. Due to the six heavyweight releases that I have selected as the premier albums of 1996, I will break this installment up into three segments. Each segment will critically explore and deconstruct two albums. The first segment will exclusively focus on 2Pac and his two landmark albums, All Eyez on Me and The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory. The second segment will feature Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt and Nas’ It Was Written. Outkast’s ATLiens and The Fugees’ The Score will anchor the third segment and round out 1996.
I know, right?!!! 1996 was one hell of a year… and you haven’t even seen the honorable mentions yet!
7 Comments. Filed under black culture, entertainment, music, art, popular culture, Hip-Hip.
Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson
The King of Pop joined the ancestors today at age 50. One of the most groundbreaking artists to ever grace the stage, Michael Jackson was more than a musician he was a popular culture icon. I’m disgusted with the way the media has been denigrating his legacy by focusing their reports on his secluded and eccentric lifestyle. I must have heard the term “tortured soul” a dozen times in the past 2 hours of media coverage. It was media’s obsessive infatuation with Jackson that probably contributed to the heart failure that claimed his life this afternoon. That said, I just wanted to give a Michael Jackson a Blackademics farewell free of judgment and scrutiny. Since he was a little boy, MJ has inspired us with his dynamic personality, powerful voice, dynamic stage presence and dazzling dance moves. His legacy will live with us and our children for generations to come.
6 Comments. Filed under black culture, popular culture, obituary.
Coming of Age With Hip Hop (part 3)
1995
Who remembers the rawness of 1995? This year was dedicated to the grime and dirt of the B side as rappers moved impervious to mainstream tastes. During this year, it was almost a guarantee that you wouldn’t hear “your shit” on the radio unless you were prepared to stay up all night on weekends to hear an underground mix-show. Thank God that one of my homeys was willing to do that. I use to look forward to arriving at school early on Mondays because I knew my man, Evan, would have a tape. He and his brother, Jason, would stay up every Friday and Saturday night to record those underground mixes and we would pump that shit on Monday before class. You gotta love a real Hip Hop head!
In 1995, underground artists emerged with gritty singles, iceless wrists and naked necks. Before the advent of the million-dollar Hype Williams video shoot or the standard props of ethnically ambiguous video vixens, emcees circa 1995 featured in low-budget hood videos. Instead of random scantily clad women, rappers posed next to sordid housing projects with their neighborhood comrades. There were no Bentleys or Maybachs in 1995. I vividly remember everyone wanting to hop out of a MPV mini van squad deep like, “WHAT?!” No one needed 400 dollar denim with colorful artwork on the pockets then either. Some Guess jeans, an army hat and a Champion sweatshirt would easily suffice. Can it be that it was all so simple then? Compared to the loud colors, gaudy jewelry, flashing lights and brand name label-dropping of today’s materialistic rappers, 1995 has to seem like an exercise in cultural frugality.
19 Comments. Filed under Uncategorized, black culture, entertainment, music, art, popular culture, Hip-Hip.
What Would You Tell Your Former “Master” If He Asked You To Return to the Peace and Serenity of His Ohio Plantation?
Emancipation day, or Juneteenth, celebrates the announcement of the “abolition” of enslavement in the state of Texas. I use the term abolition loosely because the Emancipation Proclamation did little to improve the lives of enslaved (or formerly enslaved) Africans and African Americans. Issued in September of 1862, the Proclamation was not legally effective until January 1st 1863 and was not enforced with any urgency until years later. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day after a Union General marched 2,000 federal troops into the state of Texas to enforce abolition by way of rifle and bayonet. This is supposedly when Black people “got free.” What the freedmen didn’t realize was that the slave holding elite had begun to devise a system of institutionalized terrorism known as Jim Crow, which would successfully replace enslavement with more modern tools of administering white supremacy. Fast forward to today, we’ve still got the prison industrial complex, racist gentrification, profiling and drug policies, police brutality and racial discrimination in everything from health care to jobs and schools. We’re really not free yet. Right? But I’m not writing this post to throw salt on Juneteenth. I understand and respect the value to recognizing, and even celebrating Juneteenth as a symbolic gesture commemorating the end of federally sanctioned enslavement in the United States of America. There, I said it. And to prove my righteous intentions, I’m going to share a gem with you that was passed on to me by another scholar in struggle. It’s a letter that a formerly enslaved brother named Jourdon Anderson, wrote to his former captor when he was asked to return to the plantation (the audacity). Check it out:
3 Comments. Filed under history, economy, enslavement.
June 2009 Blackadeimcs Interview: Internationally renown Ghanaian recording artist, Samini
Blackademics is celebrating Black Music month by publishing a groundbreaking interview with Ghanaian Hiplife and Hip Hop artist, Samini. Strait from his studio in Accra we discuss Hip-Hop, language and Black identity from an international perspective. You don’t want to miss this interview! Check out a youtube video of the interview below, or click this link.
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Coming of Age With Hip Hop (part 2)
Welcome back for the second installment of “Coming of Age with Hip Hop.” As promised from last week, we will be critically reviewing Hip Hop circa 1994. However, before I begin, allow me to recap the best albums and honorable mentions from 1993. You all will see an extra album placed in 1993’s Honorable Mention that I forgot to add to last week’s list. Please accept my humble apologies for the oversight. In no particular order, the lists are as follows:
Best Albums of 1993
Snoop Dogg: Doggy Style
Wu-Tang: Enter the Wu-tang (36 Chambers)
A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders
Honorable Mention (1993)
Black Moon: Enter Da Stage
KRS ONE: Return of the Boom Bap
Digable Planets: Reachin (A New Refutation of Time & Space)
Souls of Mischief: 93 ‘till Infinity
16 Comments. Filed under entertainment, music, art, popular culture, Hip-Hip.
Obama Seeks New Era Between the United States and the Muslim World? You Be The Judge.
While I was waiting to be interviewed on sister Janice Graham’s program, Our Common Ground this past Thursday, I became aware of an important speech that was being delivered half-way around the world. On June 4th, 2009 President Obama addressed Cairo University, in a self-proclaimed attempt to:
Seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
A lot went down in the 50-minute speech, including Obama taking some responsibility for the negative effects that American imperialism has had on the Muslim world. He discussed the extent to which America played a pivotal role in “denying rights and opportunities” to Muslims during the Cold War and even came clean about how “the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Last time I checked, these weren’t things the US was taking responsibility for. President Obama went on to routinely condemn al Quadea and the 9/11 attackers, but then threw a curve ball by subtly challenging the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Not only did he call upon Israel to acknowledge Palestine’s “right to exist,” but he also likened the plight of Palestinians to that of African and African American victims of Jim Crow and South African Apartheid. Check this quote out:
1 Comment. Filed under news/politics, Africa, President Obama.
Hip Hop: Black Political and Cultural Crossroads - Free & D. Noble on Urban Progressive Radio Tonight!
Tonight - June 4th @ 9pm, Pierce Freelon and Olokun Shangol Olugbala aka. D. Noble will be guests on Urban Progressive Talk Radio’s broadcast of Our Common Ground with host Janice Graham. You can listen live at: www.ustalknetwork.com and call in: 954-530-2068.
Our Common Ground is alternative, interactive, activist talk radio programming exploring global and community issues, events, thought, ideas and perspectives in and about the African-American community. Read more here.
What’s on deck for discussion? Here’s a quote from Janice’s email blast about tonight’s show:
What began as a voice for social and political dissent giving voice and spirit to a new urban political, social and economic stagnation, has the HIP HOP Movement succumbed to naked materialism and unchecked immorality? Or is Hip Hop evolving into a Movement of real social and political reform? Or, is it just a pseudo consciousness, thinking and approach to make us think it is progressive, better than rap with the same diet of back beat and emptiness?
After the interview, we’ll convene here at Blackademics.org and keep the discussion going! Stay tuned.
Post A Comment. Filed under black culture, history, popular culture, Hip-Hip.
Coming of Age with Hip Hop (Part 1)
I am a Hip Hop lifer and have been subscribing to the cultural praxis of Hip Hop since the early days of my youth. I have witnessed the dynamic culture evolve, mature, stand still and contradict itself. Despite the various paradigm shifts within the culture and the myriad artistic aesthetics affected consequently, one thing that has remained constant (what Amiri Baraka refers to as the “changing same”) is the idea that the “game just ain’t what it used to be.” Since my preteen years, numerous rap artists (e.g. KRS ONE, Ice Cube), along with cultural practitioners like my older brother (and every other nigga I know), have been lamenting the deterioration of creativity, skill and progression in rap music. While I generally agree with these persisting diatribes, one thing that I find interesting is how so many people (who boast different ages, different geographical and cultural locales, and divergent ideas of what our cultural standards should be) can all agree that the game is “fucked up.” If we are prepared to allege that Hip Hop is dead (or struggling on life-support), then we must first wrestle with when she was last found alive, thriving and vibrant. By looking back and critically engaging our past, we may be able to reclaim and assert the most progressive, resistant and innovative expressions of ourselves as we reaffirm and actualize healthier, holistic articulations of who we are and can be.
21 Comments. Filed under black culture, music, art, popular culture.
The Obama Effect: Quick Fix for Black Achievement?
Also posted at WireTap and KameelahWrites
Summary: Instead of magic role models we need long-term education investment.
While browsing Ta-Nehisi Coates’s blog at The Atlantic Magazine, I stumbled onto his satirical link “Researchers Shocked That Obama’s Mere Presence Doesn’t Make Negroes Smarter.” After assuming I would be led to an Onion article, I arrived at a Newsweek article by Sharon Begley.
In this article, Begley refers to a January New York Times piece, “Study Sees an Obama Effect as Lifting Black Test-Takers.” The article discusses how researchers Dr. Ray Friedman, David M. Marx and Sei Jin Ko documented what they call an “Obama effect,” whereby the achievement gap between Blacks and Whites on a 20-question GRE test administered before Obama’s nomination almost disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election.
Friedman, a management professor at Vanderbilt University, Marx, a professor of social psychology at San Diego State University, and Jin Ko, a visiting professor in management and organizations at Northwestern, submitted their study for review to the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Proponents of the Obama Effect argue that Obama’s existence as a Black role model would help Blacks overcome anxieties about racial stereotypes linked to academics and standardized testing.
2 Comments. Filed under Uncategorized.
