Entries Tagged 'Black Music' ↓

Miss Dynamite: LaRhonda Petitt easily passes the
“Looks Like Her Daddy” test

As the Washington Post archly puts it, “There was no off switch on the ‘Sex Machine.'” So, rightly, upon legendary musician James Brown’s Christmas 2006 death, a lot of his far-strewn kids started coming home…with their hands out for a piece of the Hardest [Working] Man in Show Business’s estate.

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When inventor Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped a piece of untreated rubber on a hot stove and “discovered” vulcanization (“Mesoamericans” had mastered the process centuries earlier), he probably never dreamed that, over 140 years later, the notion of burning rubber would lead to a #1 R&B smash for the GAP Band. Yet, alas.

Merci to hyper-cool Digital Femme Cheryl Lynn for linking to the video, which I’d never seen, despite the track being fundamental as 11-dimensional strings when it came to me getting through senior year at Freeport High School. Most of all, though, Lynn argues that “Burn Rubber On Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)” should be cited as “Reason #525 why Rock Band needs a Funk Band Expansion Pack.” To which I say, hear, hear.

Look up “GAP Band” on Wikipedia, and you’ll see “Not to be confused with band gap,” beneath the headline.

“Band gap”?? I took the bait:

In solid state physics and related applied fields, the band gap, also called an energy gap or stop band, is a region where a particle or quasiparticle is forbidden from propagating. For insulators and semiconductors, the band gap generally refers to the energy difference between the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band.

Or:

Thank you for your time!

It takes a lot for me to watch white people dance with Black people and forget that I’m watching white people dance with Black people. Target’s “Happy Together” spot, agencied by Wieden + Kennedy Portland (of NIKE fame) and directed by Mike Maguire, doesn’t come close, but may be pointed in the right direction. (YouTube has it linked to the screenshot, above. However, I’d suggest you check out the QuickTime on the Coloribus.com web site, which is, as well as being clearer, downloadable.)

And since you’ve been wondering, the sexy track and video is “Calabria 2007” by Enur feat. Natasja.

Also, did you notice the line we just crossed?

This is MEDIA ASSASSIN’s 250th post!

We couldn’t have done it without you! Thanks to all of you for reading, subscribing, commenting, blogrolling, trackbacking, and your supporting!

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.

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Vocalist Rene Marie prepares to knock one outta the state

Kanye West’s “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” speech is now officially retired as my favorite “Straight Jack-Move Racial Protest by a Musician in a Public Forum.” It’s now a distant second to Colorado jazz vocalist Rene Marie’s singing the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” July 1st, at Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s State of the City address, but, instead of using Francis Scott Key’s traditional words, switching them out for the lyrics to James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the so-called “Black National Anthem”!

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Is there anything more inspiring than seeing the man next in line to the throne popping and locking?

Yeah, probably.

Thinking broadly: George Washington Carver, 1906

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.

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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.

We will not see the likes of him again.

Click the pic. Play it loud. See why he was so great.