While you’re in the neighborhood, though, please check out Hafstad’s “Jay Z vs MacGyver”, which blurs a high-speed run through Jigga’s “Encore” video with the MacGyver TV show intro. I know: It just works. Can’t say why.
Hey: If you’re in Chicago tomorrow afternoon, Thursday, July 17th, around 3 pm, come on by the Chicago Cultural Center’s Claudia Cassidy Theater. I’m going to be there with my pals Chuck D of Public Enemy, and Hank and Keith Shocklee of the Bomb Squad, hosted by the Future of Music Coalition, and talking about the creation of P.E.’s seminal album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, above.
The Treacherous Three, Norman Thomas H.S., 1981 by Joe Conzo
Fascination with hip-hop’s history is growing, as a generation that never saw it comes of age. Because of this, photographers who had the pluck to take pictures of the then developing scene are experiencing a renewed interest in their work. (I’ve even been the beneficiary of this new regard, enjoying my own show, last summer, of pictures taken mostly on Long Island, during the White Castle days of what would become Public Enemy.)
Today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, July 11, at 2 pm ET, I’ll be speaking with Joe Conzo, whose pictures of formative hip-hop sextet the Cold Crush Brothers form the basis of seminal urban work in his book, Born in the Bronx; Janette Beckman, a British photog who, arriving here in NYC during the early ’80s, having exhausted punk, found fresh! inspiration shooting Run-DMC, Boogie Down Productions, and others (The Breaks: Stylin’ and Profilin’ 1982-1990); and Jamel Shabazz (Seconds of My Life), whose touching portraits, mostly of Black New Yorkers, have drawn comparisons to James Van Der Zee and Gordon Parks.
You can hear the ideas of these thoughtful innovators by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, you can check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, check out our archive for up to two weeks after broadcast.
What are the possible uses of hip-hop, all of them?
How many kinds of tasks can it do? It what kinds of ways might it be used, in order to help people better understand themselves and/or each other?
This question is, to me, the most important, yet least-addressed, as it pertains to hip-hop and its future. It’s also the one on which I’m focusing, assisted by a talented rapper and educator, during my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, June 20, 2 pm ET.
My favorite part? As with you, every single moment of the dancing, and the actor’s perfect sync of the M.C.’s closing, “Stop! Hammer Time!” line, above.
But running a really close second? That glare his wife gives him at the 0:21 mark, right, after their youngest calls him out of reverie.
What’s the problem, Mom? Can’t Dad do a little dancin’ on his Very Special Day?
Rebecca Sealfon, 1997 Scripps Spelling Bee champ, casts her vote
I don’t actually share the outrageous ecstasy Barack Obama’s upcoming nomination has unleashed on our land. But when it comes to compressing said elation into a seventy-second video breakbeat, Jay Smooth of illdoctrine.com inspires pure joy. Had Black Eyed Peas front-man Will.I.Am done something as unpretentious and true as this piece, or as Jay’s earlier Pulp Fiction/Clinton superdelegate mashup, I wouldn’t have to keep talking about him, or his blathering, tepid “Yes We Can.” Still yet, a small price to pay in order to see real talent. Rock rock rock on, Jay.
Aside from the performances themselves, what I love about Kanye West’s 2007 single, “Classic (Better Than I’ve Ever Been),” where he invites Nas, KRS-One, and Rakim to join him in the cipher, is that, though guests, they all spank him, like a child, on his own record.
As it’s been often said, don’t send a boy in to do a man’s job.
You might think that a student with a double major in Geography and Russian & Slavic Studies—one matriculating in about a year, before heading to grad school—might have more to do at 4 a.m. than create a geographic outline of the places rapper Ludacris likes to pick up chicks, based on his 2001 Word of Mouf single w/ Nate Dogg, “Area Codes,” above. (Click on the map to enlarge it, then again to see it at maximum size.)
But, if you do think that, you neither know the contradictions of higher ed nor the peccadilloes of Stefanie Gray. (You also haven’t been to the incredible Strange Maps blog, where I first saw this.)
There, the CUNY Hunter College undergrad, right, notes, “I’m a female and a feminist. I dislike the usage of the word ‘ho’. However, as a geography major, I find this song hilarious, and had to map it.”
QUESTION: Have you ever noticed that the “Nicest Kids in Town” dance sequence, from the hit 2007 musical, Hairspray, syncs perfectly with “Ante Up (Remix),” the 2000 Funkmaster Flex track by M.O.P., Busta Rhymes, and Remy Ma?
STORY: It’s 1962 in Baltimore, Maryland. Tracy Turnblad (Nicole Blonsky) is in school, merely tolerating chemistry class, anxiously waiting for it to end. When the bell finally rings, she dashes out and grabs her best friend, Penny Pingleton (Amanda Bynes). “Penny! Come on, hurry!” she urges. “Push, we’re late!”
While the two run fast as they can over to Tracy’s house, in a darkened studio across town, camera crews set up shots and slickly-dressed teens spin on their heels, taking special care to “douse their ‘do’s'” in Ultra Clutch. It’s The Corny Collins Show! One minute to air!
Tracy and Penny burst through the door and turn on the television, just in time for the start of their favorite weekday afternoon TV program. Soon, they’re moving to the beat as Corny (James Marsden), Link Larkin (Zac Efron), and “the nicest kids in town” do the hottest dances to the latest song!
INSTRUCTIONS: Forward this to your friends! Though audio is NSFW, play loudly, share widely, and enjoy!
Don’t those words sound strange together: “Suge Knight’s assailant”? The beatifically smiling young man, above, is, allegedly, he: Greg the Barber, or, as he is popularly now known, the Man Who Cold Knocked Suge Knight Both Out and Flat On His Behind.
